Faust Chaos
by mcrshank
Summary: It'd been a couple of months after Jennifer Blake's death & everything seemed normal; but of course nothing can stay normal in Beacon Hills. People suddenly start dying, something supernatural seems to haunting the town, a new girl arrives to the school, and suddenly it seems that the pack has to find a way to save Stiles. Will they be able to? {Alternate version of TW Season 3B}
1. Chapter 1: Pilot

It seemed everything had been able to go right, for once. Or as right as things could go after a couple of deaths and disappearances of a few people months back; and Deaton's warning words about the Nemeton calling forth dark forces of evil had turned out to be nothing but a dire and pointless warning so far, for there had been no deaths in the usually dangerous town of Beacon Hills, Callifornia. Or at least not murders; there'd been at _least _four suicides in the last two months. It was sad; and looking at the faces of some of the family members of the deceased and disappeared, whether dead at some point during the Jennifer ordeal or the recent suicides, on a daily basis thanks to the deeply low population of the town remained as a constant reminder of what had happened. It almost made anyone feel guilty for feeling even a little happy.

Or, maybe not anyone, but one spastic boy called Stiles Stilinski. It had appeared, as he'd looked around the quiet classroom full of people writing down on a notebook, that he was the only uneasy and somewhat angry person in the room. The worst part was that he had absolutely no idea why he felt the way he did. Nothing. It seemed as if that day he had, as they say, woken up on the wrong side of the bed, for he had absolutely no reason to be angry. Things in Beacon Hills were perfectly fine, Scott had actually even started on working on getting his old girlfriend, Allison, back (whether it'd work or not, Stiles didn't know, but hearing about it would definitely be fun for him), and, well, Lydia was now his girlfriend; something he'd wanted since longer than he dared admit. Everything had almost felt like things were too good to be true… Yet he knew knew how that usually went: if things seemed to good to be true, they probably were. Yet, still; regardless of that mental reminder there was absolutely no reason for his anger. So why was it there? What exactly could be happening in his head to make the sort of rage bubble within him? What logic hid behind it?

And, of course, the constant tapping coming from behind against the leg of his chair made everything worse, and a deep frustrated sigh had left his lips. "Do you mind?" He'd asked with his own version of a quiet scream as he turned around to look at the startled girl who thankfully had stopped tapping her foot against his chair as soon as he'd turned around. Her legs uncrossed and she sat a little straighter. "Thank you." Stiles said with a movement of his head before turning to look toward his own notes again; forcing himself to focus on his work and truly unable to understand what had him so fired up; which only made him even more angry. See the problem?

Well, that day he'd woken up wondering when things would go wrong; something he only realized two days later whilst looking at brands of the many possible options of potato chips in one of the three local supermarkets. He realized that he'd been thinking about his fear for things taking a wrong turn prior to his supposedly inexplicable anger. And why should he do that instead of enjoying whatever time he was allowed to enjoy the very strange peace in the town and the wonderful girl she now called his girlfriend?

Yet, as his eyes lifted from the many brands on the stand, that moment of joyful realization turned into one of the instances in which guilt decided to eat at him; for the mother of one of the guys that had so horribly been sacrificed months back was standing close beside him. The sorrow of her face became clear the moment her eyes met his during the smallest moments in such an intensity that it nearly made a hole in his chest; he knew what losing someone close to him felt like, because he'd lost a couple of friends, and his mother, though she wasn't exactly dead, yet he couldn't come close to imagining what it was like to lose a son or daughter. With guilt singing in his eyes, they lowered; in pretense at attempting to continue finding the proper snack for the movie day he'd planned on having, but his mind wasn't thinking about the crunchy hopefully cheesy deliciousness before him, not for a bit.

His throat cleared and his eyes lifted once more, attempting to look in the direction of the sorrow-filed lady once again; but what he found instead was the empty spot where she had been standing, and his girlfriend, Lydia, looking at something on her right, while her hand rested on a magazine on a stand on her left near the checkout line. In a strange motion, the guilt almost instantly washed away from Stiles' system and got replaced by relief. The mere reminder of the relief he'd felt daily at remembering that Lydia and most of his friends had survived the whole Darach ordeal; and, of course, soon after, the joy at remembering that the strawberry blonde was his girlfriend. "Lydia!" He called, watching her head instantly whip in his direction, making her hair fly around her like a beautiful curtain, before his eyes fell shortly to the snacks in front of him; he settled on taking three different bags of chips he'd been unsure of which to choose from, before he looked in the girl's direction once again and walked forth to stand by her.

What Stiles didn't know was that the very girl he was walking towards was suffering of the same realizations. She shifted her weight onto one of her feet once she allowed the smallest of smiles to light up her features; small because she'd seen the same woman Stiles had seen, walking away with the same tortured expression. People had been sacrificed not long ago, and more people had committed suicide, and she was standing there looking at fashion magazines while waiting for her turn to pay for her items as if nothing at all had happened. Instantly, as if by a reaction to her thoughts, Lydia's hand lifted to touch her neck, where once upon a time there had been a bruise of a horrible red line across it, where Jennifer Blake had attempted to strangle her. She'd survived, and she felt guilty for it. A reverie of which she was broken off the moment she realized Stiles had asked her something. "Sorry." She said, forcing a smile onto her perfectly lip stick'd lips. "What did you say?"

In all honestly, Stiles would have felt offended, but what he guessed to be Lydia's unconscious movements added with the manner in which she'd been staring off in the direction opposite to what her hands had rested on, plus the expression that crossed her features in mirror of what he guessed to be his own previous grimace, had the young boy simply nodding in what he hoped to be understanding. "You too, huh?" He inquired with a soft shake of his head, his eyes shifting and his head turning in the direction Lydia had been looking off on and seeing nothing out of the ordinary before turning his head to look into Lydia's gentle eyes once again.

Stiles wasn't surprised when Lydia's head bobbed in a confirming nod. "Yeah." She admitted, looking away from her boyfriend to start placing her picked out items from the cart to the band for the cashier to check off. "I feel like I shouldn't be here right now. People died, and…" She frowned, looking up into Stiles' eyes once again before forcing herself to whisper. "All I have is the memory of that bruise around my neck." And she couldn't help it, at that moment, all she could feel was guilt over the thought of _What would have happened if I just could have found the bodies before the people died?_

"Hey, Lydia." Stiles called, his head shaking a couple of times while his hand reached to take Lydia's own from their position near her neck, that she hadn't realized she'd even done until he'd done that, and lacing their fingers together whilst forbidding his eyes to look away from hers. "Look, it'd be really stupid of me to tell you not to feel this way." _Because I feel the exact same, _he completed in his head. "But if you're set on thinking about the people who died, maybe you should try thinking about the ones that are alive because of what—… happened." He'd been close to saying _because of what we did, _but in all truthfulness, the cashier girl who was working on Lydia's items had already sent them a look; one he decided to be cautious of and ignore. "Who knows how many more people would have died otherwise." He finished, allowing the pad of the thumb of the hand that held hers graze against the skin of Lydia's own.

She solely nodded, squeezing his hand. "Yeah, you're right." She simply stated, quickly letting go of his hand so she could fish out the credit card she was supposed to use to pay off her items. And she remained quiet, the haunted look remained across her features, for as long as she gathered her bags and clearly stood near to wait for Stiles to finish his shopping; and while he observed her, he realized her demeanour screamed that she wasn't done speaking. So he paid, actually attempted a little polite smile toward the cashier girl, and then hurried on a stumble to Lydia's side; who, as soon as they were out of hearing shot and away from the store on route to the parking lot, decided to whisper in his direction once again. "I know we saved many people. But I can't help feeling like if I'd done something, if I _knew _how this whole... _Banshee _thing works, maybe we would have been able to save everyone."

Those words alone made Stiles' forehead adorn with a little frown; quite surprised at the sincerity of her words and suddenly catching her arm once again, gently as to not make her drop her bags, and making her stop somewhere near the first row of cars in the parking lot. "I think I've read many books and comics, watched many movies and shows, and lived through enough to be able to know that no matter what you do you _can't _save everyone." He simply confessed; watching the emotions play in Lydia's features, sadness, guilt, frustration even. "But we did try," he continued, watching as her eyes rolled shortly and she even attempted to turn away. "And I know that's not enough, trust me. I _know _it isn't. But it's going to have to do, because we can't go back in time and change things, so we're going to have to try to be okay with what we _achieved." _He paused before he attempted one of his shots at light humour to soften his girlfriend's mood. "Unfortunately Gallifray isn't real, so no time machines have been discovered yet." He spoke the words with the smallest of trying smiles in a _very _geeky attempt at making Lydia smile.

Which, by the momentary confusion that crossed her features that were followed by the smallest of wondering smiles, Stiles seemed to have accomplished. "Galli-what now?" She wondered, her head tilting shortly as if the explanation to her confusion were printed in his features and he could read it solely by looking at his face in a different angle.

Of course, Stiles sighed. He'd forever be disappointed in the many things his friends (and girlfriend) seemed to be absolutely in the dark about; awesome things. Things he liked. "It's from a TV show." He admitted, shaking his head shortly.

"Right." Lydia smiled, shaking her head and genuinely thinking Stiles was the most adorable thing... in a very hot way. Not that she'd tell him that; if she did she'd never hear the end of it. Instead, she decided to speak something else. "You're odd." She admitted with an affectionate tone. "But you're still right; we can't go back in time." And only then did she allow her eyes to look into his own. "So I guess I'll just have to live the 'right now'"

"That's right." Stiles nodded; regardless of the light weight against his chest. He instantly realised that what he'd spoken had been true: what would the people at Beacon Hills do but attempt to live their lives as best as they could for as long as they could? This time his eyes simply refused to move from hers. "And _right now,_" he started with a grin, "I've got a movie day planned. Wanna join me?" He asked, making the one hand that held onto the bags with his purchased snacks shake a bit so the sound of the contents echoed around them both. "I've got snacks!"

Lydia's eyes rolled once again, yet the smile across her lips refused to dissipate before she simply shrugged. "Yeah, sure. That'd be nice." She agreed, finding her boyfriend's mood somewhat contagious the moment a huge elated smile crossed his kissable pink lips. "But no Star Wars." And then she turned around before she could see the somewhat disappointed features that shifted in his face at her words.

She may not have known it, but he'd been planning to watch all the Star Wars films in a row.

_**~A few hours later, in a house somewhere in Beacon Hills~**_

The pen tapped gently against the desk as Jordan Wright's eyes scanned the page in front of him; though he was a good student, or as good as he could be, he had never been good at Biology. Sure, he was a member of the Lacrosse team, and he played in the school orchestra, and he _may _or may not be the favourite of a few of his teachers, but that didn't mean his brain allowed him much room for uninteresting things like the reason behind the reproduction of cells; _Or is that philosophy? _

But he was good; mainly because he didn't exactly seem to find the point to school, so he flew past it and allowed his logical mind to get the best for, and of him; so he finished every school assignment because he had to, or replied and participated because it was what was expected of him so that he could get a sheet of paper that said Jordan was qualified enough to go to a valuable University, so he could get _yet _another paper that said he could work as a tax adviser and maybe make more money that he could count to be able to stop working and become able to open some sort of kitchen business he'd actually enjoy running.

So, naturally, there he was, sitting at home with his mum's NSYNC playing loudly from the speakers downstairs as she occupied herself with her latest hobby; the words to "Bye, Bye" weren't helping Jordan's concentration any, and the reality of atoms and cells simply flew past him in words that he simply couldn't understand, nor focus on. "MOM?" He called loudly with a blank expression, staring at the text book in front of him as if that alone were to give him the answers he searched for. "MOOOOOOOOOOOOM!" He called again, this time raising his eyes from the words on the textbook to look toward the door of his room. The volume of the music lowered, and Jordan nearly sighed in relief.

"YOU CALLED?!" Came his mother's voice from downstairs in a tone more happy and amused than annoyed. Something that almost confused Jordan.

"YEAH, COULD YOU PLEASE KEEP IT DOWN?" He wondered; and it had been as if the blank tone of his words hadn't helped his case, because not even a minute later, his mother's voice was tooting loudly in reply.

"NO." _Oh, okay. _He thought while sighing in frustration and dropping the pen in the middle of his open text book the moment the volume of the music rose once again.

"Oh my god." Jordan's eyes rolled, and with no other choice, he stood up from the chair that, in his opinion, was bound to make his ass look like a Tylenol pill if he continued to sit there for as long as it had been. Yet, as he made his way toward the closed door, another loud sound echoed in the room, right behind him: his window opening. His hand paused on the door knob and his whole body turned to look at the now ajar window, a brow lifting in confusion as he looked around his room. There was no wind; and even if there had been, his window had a handle that was locked, or _had _been locked. "How the hell...?" He whispered in confusion.

Annoyed, Jordan walked toward the open nuisance with a determined pace; his head poked out of the window in search of the source of it's opening, yet, when he found nothing, his eyes decided to roll once again. One of his hands lifted once his frame stood upright so he could close the window once again in order for the slightly chilly winter air to not make his room any colder than it already was; and since the music was still playing as loudly as his mother dared make it without bothering the neighbours (but apparently she was okay with bothering _him), _Jordan decided to turn around again to try to talk some sense into his mother so she would let him do his homework in a silent peace. Yet, when he was about to turn around and away from the window, he noticed a strange grey and black blob of... _something _near his reflection on the now closed glass. "What the hell?" He heard himself saying before he turned quick to face the source of the strange reflection. It was smoke. And it hovered in front of the young man for a couple of curious seconds.

And then it charged in his direction.

The last thing Jordan could remember was the sound of his own scream being muffled with the sounds of his own throat gagging and reacting to the smoke's intake to his body before everything went black.

**To Be Continued.**


	2. Chapter 2: Lost His Mind

The idea of 'pop quizzes' always preoccupied Stiles Stilinski; though, strangely enough, the one taking place at that very moment was all about the homework he'd busted his head open completing exactly the Monday before. Even then, as he thought of the answers, he realized he was nervous; maybe a little more nervous than what a little fifteen question quiz should make him. So much, in fact, that he found himself flinching when the tip of his pencil broke. He nearly sighed in frustration, but he remembered the pencil that was so neatly tucked away on the side of his backpack.

As he reached for the other pencil, Stiles allowed his eyes to wonder; they looked around at the class full of concentrating students, some nearly as frustrated as Stiles had been, and some, like Lydia Martin, that didn't even seem to be thinking twice about the answers. Of course, his girlfriend was naturally smart, so he wasn't at all surprised.

Stiles' head automatically whipped to the front of the classroom when out of the corner of his eye he could swear he'd seen something black move on the top of the wall; yet, when he looked, there had been noting there. He sighed and forced his eyes to return to his quiz with his brand new pencil in hand. Were his nerves so high that he was starting to see things? _Way to go, Stiles. _He thought to himself. _Way to go. _

What felt like hours later, but had truly only been minutes, the very last question of the quiz had been finally answered, and Stiles nearly sighed in relief and sat back on his chair in triumph; and he was just about to do that, when out of the corner of his eye he saw the same strangely dark moving thing on the upper side of the front wall. Yet, once again, just like the time before, when his eyes fully focused on the place where he could have sworn he'd seen the black thing, there was nothing. With a frown, his eyes fell toward his completed test, and the already deep frown became more prominent as he leaned slightly closer to the paper; the words _'It's your turn to suffer' _were printed on the paper with broken black ink as if it were one of the questions on the test, and Stiles sat back quickly when he finished reading as such. "What the…" He whispered before he looked around the room again, wondering if anyone around him had the same thing in their own test. _Please, _he thought, for he knew it was completely stupid and impossible; no one, not his best friend, Scott, not Isaac, nor Lydia were reacting badly at their own test. So, of course, Stiles forced his eyes to return to the paper on his desk; only when he did, he noticed the letters were bigger this time; bolder. '_**IT'S YOUR TURN, STILES!'**_ "Whoa!" The wide eyed boy flinched back on his chair so far that he didn't even realize he'd managed to make it to the very edge of the seat until he ended up falling in a flailing mess toward the floor. _What the fuck!?_ He wondered; the words that had been printed on the test were then completely printed inside his mind; yet, when his eyes saw the fallen test on the floor beside him, the words he'd previously seen were simply gone. It looked completely normal.

So, what? He was crazy now?

His eyes shifted from one side of the room to the other; amused expressions adorned every single visage that looked in Stiles' direction, and he had to force himself to grin sheepishly as the embarrassment simply became overclouded by the confusion. The voice of the unamused teacher reached his ringing ears as if from a faraway tunnel, but his eyes quickly shifted to look in his direction as he forced his frame to stand up in a wildly quick move. "What?" Stiles asked, frowning.

"I asked if this was your strange way of telling me you were done with your test, Mr. Stilinski." The teacher repeated with a halfway angry expression, looking at the young man with scolding eyes and his hands softly placed on the desk.

Stiles' eyes blinked a couple of times before they finally glanced toward his filled test; they narrowed as if that alone were to make the words he'd seen printed before shining on the brand filled out paper, but there was nothing but the lame Chemistry questions. "Uh… no." Stiles finally replied, lifting his eyes to look at the teacher still on his desk. "I mean, yes." The teacher's eyes pierced him completely, and soon Stiles realized what he'd just admitted to; it made a hand lift and his head shake. "No!" He heard everyone around him chuckling, "God, no, that's not what I meant." He frowned. "I mean, yes, I finished my test, but… that's not why I fell."

He couldn't understand what was happening, yet he simply forced himself to follow the teacher's instructions to hand him his test and exit the classroom. Yet, of course, at the feeling of two sets of eyes proving into his back more prominently than the rest, he looked in Lydia and Scott's direction. "I'll be…" And he motioned towards the door with his thumb.

"Dude, you okay?" Scott wondered, whilst Lydia only frowned on her seat. They were worried, Stiles could see that, and he wasn't surprised of it either. Everyone would just have seen his fall, but his friends would see his expression.

"Yeah." And then he forced himself to move; Stiles took his backpack and his finished test before heading toward the teacher's desk, leaving the paper on it, smiling at him as innocently as he dared to through his confusion, and finally leaving the classroom. His hand gripped onto one of the straps of his backpack almost as if his life depended on it, even as he forced himself to remain, leaning his back against the wall of the outside of the classroom he'd just exited from, to wait for Lydia to exit as well. A long sigh escaped his lips in short frustration. "What the hell is happening?" He wondered in a whisper as his one free hand lifted to allow soft digits to rub against his temple. Because this was not the first weird thing that happened to him in the past few months. _Am I actually losing my mind now? _

Inside the classroom it didn't take long for Scott and Lydia to decide they needed to go check on Stiles. "I'll go, I'm done my test already." Lydia quickly told him and stood before Scott could even reply; the truth was that she had been done her test ten minutes after the teacher had handed it out, yet she'd waited, as every student was supposed to do. So without further ado, Lydia rose from her seat, all of her things in hand, to give the teacher her filled sheet of paper. "There's only a couple of minutes left of class, can I—"

"Yes, go." The teacher told her before she even finished her words, motioning with his hand toward the classroom door, and making the strawberry blond haired girl smile the smallest of smiles before hurrying to exit the classroom.

She walked out the door and quite accidentally slammed it closed behind her; yet she didn't care, because not even seconds after the loud noise, she noticed her boyfriend leaning against the closest wall of the classroom; flinching as if the echo of the slamming door had broken him from some reverie. Lydia walked toward him. "Stiles?" She called, frowning gently as she attempted to search his eyes for the answer to her next question. "What's going on?"

Stiles had been about to speak before she worded her worries, but they shut him up with the wonder of whether to tell or not; sure, Lydia had been his friend for longer than she'd been his girlfriend, his partner in crime during all the supernatural strangeness that had haunted Beacon Hills. But who was to say that his confessing to having lost his sanity wouldn't make her want to look the other way? "Nothing." _Plus: Even in the wizardry world, seeing things isn't a good sign. _"I haven't slept very well," he admitted, though it wasn't at all a lie. "I just need loads of naps."

"Come on, Stiles." Lydia's eyes rolled; she'd been Stiles' friend long enough to know when something was _wrong; _not normal, out of the ordinary wrong. She also had logic on her side; the manner in which he'd fallen… she'd never admit it, but she was looking in his direction when the incident happened, she'd been able to see the look of horror that crossed his features. There was _something _going on. "You know you can tell me anything, what happened in there?"

Stiles' eyes studied Lydia as she nearly drilled a hole in the middle of his skull with her own, as always, knowing gaze; his lids blinked a couple of moments before his head shook. He looked down and took a breath, and when he decided to allow himself the opportunity to look in Lydia's direction again, he exhaled in a exasperated breath. "Look, I've been—" Just as he was about to break his own mental wall of dread to explain to her what was going on, the loud echo of the bell announcing a finished period tooted against the halls of the school; and just for a moment, Lydia Martin stopped being his focus point as he saw seas of people exiting classrooms. And then he finally looked at Lydia again. "I'll tell you." He expressed with the only kind of tone he felt he could make as of late: angry. "But not here." His hold on his backpack straps tightened considerably. "Let's go to mine, or yours; I don't want anyone to overhear."

Lydia frowned, her eyes studying his as if she truly were to find the answer to her questions solely by looking into his amber hues; but when she found nothing but inexplicable anger, she sighed. "Fine." She said, looking around at the plethora of people walking away toward their own classrooms. _Where is Scott?! _"I'll see you after school, then." And with no other word she turned around and walked away in the direction of her next class; wondering, second by second, if whatever period of peace they'd gotten after Jennifer Blake's death was finally coming to an end.

Stiles' brow furrowed as he watched his girlfriend walk away from him, yet he couldn't even force himself to move. The anger, the frustration at not being able to understand what was happening in his head nor around him, it was changing him in ways he couldn't understand; and it looked as if he'd hurt Lydia because of it. Which only made him the more angry.

In all truthfulness, the thought of sitting at another class to endure his own mind didn't seem appealing, so with a sigh and a shake of his head in personal disbelief at the manner in which he'd replied to a help-offering Lydia, Stiles turned around, walking in the opposite direction she had done. With only one destination in ming: the parking lot where his blue Jeep awaited him.

He thought; Stiles thought about the past few days from the moment he exited the school, he thought about his friends, his dad, his mother. Everything that he possibly could think of whilst always returning to darkened thoughts of the reality that was his present; deeply, soulfully. Yet, what felt like only seconds later, his head snapped to the side when a tapping sound awakened him from a deadly reverie. It was Lydia, right outside is Jeep's window; he frowned. How long had he been staring at nothing? How had he even gotten inside his jeep? How long had he been sitting in there with a hand extended to set the key in the ignition the way he realized he was doing? "Since we're going in the same direction and my car refused to start up, is it okay if I ride with you?" Lydia asked, making Stiles frown even more.

He blinked, head nodding even as he forced his throat to clear and his hand to finally force the key into place to shift in order to start the ignition. "Of course, come on in." He invited prior to reaching across the passenger seat to open the door for her; using the time in which she walked around the back of the Jeep to sit straight once again and lift both his hands to rub against his face.

It was a motion that wasn't lost for Lydia Martin as she settled herself into the familiar passenger seat in the blue Jeep. "Thanks." She looked in his direction for a moment prior to looking down at her feet, unsure of her boyfriend's mood. Her hands settled on her lap once she'd placed her bag beside her and the seat belt across her chest; she worried for him, for the way he frowned, for the strange look he'd given her when she'd tapped on his glass, from the silence that reigned the usually comfortable environment the moment the engine started and the Jeep started moving backwards. All that time, she worried.

And as she worried, Stiles noticed. He frowned, noticing the silence become heavy with unspoken words once he'd driven away from the school's parking lot; it was such a strange notion that before he even realized what he was doing, his right hand had fallen away from the wheel and toward one of Lydia's own in an attempt to lighten and comfort her mood; lacing their fingers together prior to lifting their hands in his direction so he could place a soft kiss at the back of her hand. "I'm sorry." He simply stated before lowering their hands and looking in her direction for a couple of seconds before paying attention to the road before him once again.

And though Lydia felt comforted shortly, she forced her head to shake in short reassurance. "No." She quickly worded. "No, don't be sorry. You don't have to tell me what's going on if you don't want to." Her grip on his hand tightened shortly, yet her eyes refused to move away from his; she wanted to know, but she didn't stop to think: What if _he _didn't want him to know?

"I never want to not tell you." He replied as if having read her thoughts; admitting such blindly before a short frustrated sigh escaped his lips once more. How could he do it? "I'm not angry for you asking what's wrong, I don't want to hide this." He nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. "I'm angry because I don't know how to explain it, or what _is _even happening." He finally said, just before returning the gentle squeeze to Lydia's hand and letting go so he could use both his hands to drive.

"What do you mean you don't know?" Lydia frowned, her head tilting shortly forward without stopping her looks in his direction; and just like that her worry returned. "Is there anything that causes you to get upset like this? Or do you get randomly mad?" She softly questioned, resting her suddenly free hand on top of Stiles' so he could continue driving even as she attempted to comfort him.

His eyes remained on the road, but when he felt her hand on his, Stiles couldn't help but feel slightly calmer. He needed to remind himself to never think Scott crazy for thinking of Allison as his rock, or anchor, ever again, for he suddenly felt as if Lydia were his. Stiles cleared his throat and shook his head shortly. "Both?" It sounded like a question, and yet another sigh escaped his lips before he spoke once again. "Look, at first I thought it was just me being a pessimist thinking I was going to lose you, or something bad was going to happen, but then I got angry for pointless little things, like… someone kicking my chair, or my dad getting home without the box of fries I'd asked him to get me." His head shook again, and he took advantage of the sudden red light to slow the car and look in Lydia's direction. "Then I blank out for small moments at a time, I…" He sighed somewhat loudly again. "I feel as if I were losing my mind."

To his last statement, Lydia quickly shook her head. "You're not losing your mind, Stiles." She solemnly stated seconds prior to start doubting her own utterance. _What if he is? _She wondered; _What if it's the darkness around Stiles' heart that Deaton spoke about? _Could she possibly help him through it? Could it possibly be like a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

It was a reverie that she didn't find herself stuck on for long, because soon after, Stiles was shaking his head, starting the movements of the car once again after a loud honk came from behind them. "Lydia," it sounded almost desperate. "I'm seeing things." He admitted, throwing a glance in her direction for only a second, "Black spots on the walls or in the corner of my room, things written on papers and signs that are _definitely _nor there; I can't tell if I'm awake or dreaming half of the time." Yet another exasperated breath escaped his lips and his head shook, he couldn't say anymore.

Lydia's concern had spiked through the roof, and she shook her head in the softest of motions as she processed everything he'd told her. It didn't sound good, obviously, it sounded terrifying, and though, for once, she felt glad she wasn't the only one seeing or hearing things, the satisfaction lasted only a few moments before the worry overpowered everything else. Not that she could very much show it. "Have you told Scott?" She asked, even if she already knew the answer before it even came.

"No." He admitted, and Lydia nodded; to say she wasn't surprised would be a lie. He'd told her before telling Scott? She should feel good, right? Why was she suddenly even more worried?

"Look," she started, clearing her throat shortly. "I don't know what's going on, but we'll figure it out." She stated. "All of us, you have to tell Scott, we can all figure it out." Watching Stiles, even as he slowly turned the car onto her street, Lydia pushed her fingers so they could laze with his even if from the back of his hand

Of course, Stiles didn't take long to twist his hand in hers so he could lift them both and press a soft kiss against the back of hers once again. "We will try." He voiced, as he single-handedly slowed his car to a messy stop in front of her house, quite unconvincingly, due to the fact that, for some reason as foreign as the reason for his anger, Stiles couldn't come close to believing there was a solution to his problem the way Lydia seemed to. But for his sake, and mostly hers, he had to believe there was.

Lydia solely nodded; using her free hand to hook in her bag's handle prior to opening the Jeep's door to exit it, yet before getting off she turned to look at Stiles once again. "Look, tell Scott, alright? And call me if you need anything." She requested, watching curiously and worriedly as Stiles' head bobbed in a nod; a motion she mirrored while she tightened her hold on Stiles' hand shortly prior to letting go and climbing down from the car.

Stiles felt guilty and worried the moment the door of his car closed and she saw Lydia starting to walk toward her front door; and as soon as she had started walking away he quickly moved across from the passenger seat again to quickly turn the handle to lower the window and call out in hearable tones. "Lydia!" He watched her turn around, and even though she smiled, Stiles could see the concern edging across her features.

"Yes?" She asked promptly, because Stiles had remained quiet.

He was going to thank her, he was going to tell her that she was right on thinking everything was going to be okay, that they'd all figure it out. He was going to comfort her; but no words could come. Instead, he felt a somewhat forced grin crossing his lips before he heard himself saying, "I'll bring your car over tonight."

Lydia frowned, blinking a couple of times in wonder over the strange silence that had come before those weird words, but all she could do was cross her arms against her chest, forcing herself to smile just like Stiles seemed to. "You don't have to do that." She admitted, wondering why such a dire topic felt wrong at that moment. "I can call a tow truck."

"No, I want to." Stiles simply admitted, nodding his head a few times, making the smile across his lips seem a little more genuine. "I'll take care of it."

Lydia scoffed a halfway amused breath, but nodded. "Okay." She allowed. "Thank you." She watched Stiles' grin turn into that satisfied expression where his lips turned into a little tight smiling line and his eyes shone with some sort of victory even for a few moments, before the window of his Jeep started rising again and the roaring of his engine started and slowly faded away.

The smile on Lydia's lips disappeared as soon as he was gone, and her steps simply led her away from the black gate and toward her front door; she unlocked it and walked inside quite automatically, moving straight up to her bedroom regardless of if she'd called out to her mother that she was home. She sat on her bed, with a seemingly permanent frown against her forehead whilst her mind went in overdrive at attempting to think of things that could be making Stiles feel the way he was.

She couldn't come up with anything, no scientific explanation, no strange disorder other than psychosis that could be making her boyfriend see things. Yet she was also quite aware of the supernatural air in the town; she'd heard murmurs, deadly threats whispered into her ear when no one was there. Could that be linked to Stiles? Could any of this be linked to the most recent suicide of one Beacon Hills High student Jordan Wright? Ugh; if only she could understand her own abilities; if only she could figure out a way to know how to use all of the voices to her advantage.

Unfortunately it wasn't a calculus problem; it was important and life threatening, and it made her nervous. It even made her angry; she wanted to understand herself, her power, her abilities. She needed to; but for the moment she simply couldn't think completely straight. All she could think of was Stiles, and how worried she suddenly was about him.

And she was scared.

**To Be Continued.**


	3. Chapter 3: The Old And The New

So Stiles Stilinski was late to class; he was late mainly because he'd suffered from horrible and heart wrenching nightmares basically all night long. And they all included the haunting black spots of smoke he'd been seeing everywhere as of late. It was a fact, things were halfway fine when out of nowhere he'd begin to think he saw something, but whenever he looked in its direction, it was gone.

Yet, the last sighting had been the day before; he'd been in the mall with his dad, getting a couple of clothes that the Sheriff had told him he truly should replace. And at one point he'd had to go into some formal shirts store for some Sheriff reason that he refused to explain to him; yet, Stiles, having seen a jewelry store right across from where his Dad had told him he needed to go, had told him to go ahead, for he wanted to look at some jewelry.

Sheriff had nodded, and knowing well his son would have no other reason to look at necklaces, rings and bracelets other than his girlfriend, Lydia, he gave the boy a bit of money to spend. So Stiles had gone to the store, and almost immediately found a very Lydia-like necklace with an L incrusted with some sort of shiny white stone and a cool-looking twist of red stones circling the L like a ribbon; something which, of course, Stiles ended up buying. Which had been fine, it'd all been normal, right?

Wrong. What concerned Stiles was that in the small amount of time he'd spent in the jeweler's he'd seen that black shadow on a corner of the store; only, this time, it didn't exactly disappear the moment the boy turned to see it like it had the other times. Stiles looked at it for what felt like an eternity as it floated and slowly left through the closest air vent as soon as the woman at the other side of the counter called Stiles' attention. Did it mean he wasn't hallucinating? Or did it mean that his sanity had been lost in much worse a level than he'd actually thought?

Whichever the right answer, Stiles was concerned; and that concern travelled into his subconscious in the form of nightmares. Nightmares that had made the boy late for school. And, as discretely as he was able to, Stiles slipped into the classroom with his backpack in his hand. Sitting behind Lydia, and beside Scott; yet, with Coach as a teacher, it was impossible to make a discrete late entrance. And that alone was enough to make the boy wonder if he should have let himself sleep at all.

Lydia looked back at Stiles the moment he sat behind her. Maybe she wouldn't exactly admit it by voice, but she'd been worried; it was rare when the boy was late to school, and when he _was _late it had something to do with the big bads that ran through the town. "Where were you?" She inquired, looking into his nearly red tired eyes before forcing herself to turn her head to look in the direction of the teacher. "Are you okay?" She whispered quickly, picking up her pen so she could attempt writing down what Coach was writing on the board, lest she got in trouble for worrying about her spastic boyfriend.

"What?" He asked, eyes blinking away at the tiredness that reigned over every single inch of his body as soon as Lydia's dulcet tones had reached his ears; his hands automatically reached into his backpack in search of the notebook that he was supposed to have brought to the class. "Oh, yeah." His head nodded almost as automatically as his other actions. "I'm fine." He lied, clearing his throat and smiling in his girlfriend's direction whilst his hands became busy with setting the first notebook he'd been able to reach for on the half desk in front of him.

_Are you? _She wanted to ask, but it was not the place, nor the time; she'd interrogate him during lunch, end of. So she smiled back at him, nodded, and returned to her note taking. Eventually the words from Coach went through her mind like repeated lessons that Lydia hardly paid attention to, her hands automatically scribbling onto the pages until the loud slam of a book brought every single eye in the classroom into a startled stare in Coach's direction as he spoke up. "Wake up, people! I know it's the first class of the day, but for Christ's sake, I don't come here just to entertain you, I want to be asleep too."

It amounted to a couple of chuckles from a few amused students, and a light roll of Lydia's eyes accompanied by a sideways smile; a smile that disappeared as soon as her kind orbs lowered to rest on the notebook where she could have _sworn _she'd been writing down notes from the lecture Coach was delivering. She hadn't been; Lydia's hand automatically let go of the writing utensil as her eyes focused on the outline of the tree she had long ago stopped drawing: the Nemeton. Only, this time, it was also adorned by black swirls of ink that pointed directly at the drawn tree like strange tornado-like arrows that made some sort of dread drain the colour of her cheeks.

It hadn't taken long for the one person who, even as tired as he was, was always aware of her to realize that something was wrong; the clinging of the falling pen had been enough to make Stiles look in her direction, and that second of awareness had been all he'd needed to notice her halfway frozen position on the chair. "Lydia?" He whispered, leaning somewhat closer against his desk in attempts at seeing the source of her frozen frame.

Before he could see a thing, though, one of the strawberry blonde's hands moved to snatch and rip away the page from her notebook; her hands twisting and crunching until the paper was nothing but a wrinkled ball. "Yes?" She asked, forcing a smile, keeping her voice low, for even in a whisper, it sounded shaken.

It was a fact Stiles didn't miss; his eyes almost instantly narrowed at their tone. The smile, her tone, the look on her eyes when she decided to turn around to face him for a couple of short seconds; he recognized it easily: it was the sort of look Lydia Martin used whenever there was something she didn't want to exactly share with the class, pardon the pun. His brow furrowed, and his lips were starting to part in order to say something, when the loud ringing of the bell echoed painfully; painfully for him due to the fact that lack of sleep gave him a headache.

People started standing; the noises of chairs scrapping against the floor and notebooks and books being tucked into backpacks filled the entire room. Stiles took the opportunity to blink his eyes a couple of times in attempt to push away the tiredness before speaking in Lydia's direction. "Can I talk to you for a sec?"

Her eyes refused to remain on him, instead they moved away and along as she placed her things inside her bag. "We've a class next, Stiles." She simply stated, highly aware of his quick movements as he set his notebook and pen inside his backpack prior to slipping a hand through one of its straps.

He had to fight the urge not to huff. "I'm aware of that; just for a moment?" He asked, attempting to not frown the moment Lydia simply started walking away from him. He followed, of course, not that he had any other option due to the fact that they both had to get out of that classroom, but once they were out the door, he reached a hand to hold her own in order to stop her. "Lydia." He called in an almost pleading tone, watching her hair float and fall against her shoulders again after the quick turn of her frame in surprise of his detainment.

It was then, while he held her hand, that he realized she was shaking.

He frowned, his eyes falling to the hand he held, senses sharpened due to the worry that beat at his insides all of a sudden. "Lydia, you're shaking." He stupidly stated, his eyes lifting to look into her own worried hues with a mirroring concern echoing in his own amber orbs.

Her eyes fell to his hand on hers, worry, and even fear scorching through her veins. Though a soft defeated sigh let her lips, a determined look crossing her gaze. "Fine." She said, shifting his hands in hers so she could easily hold his own prior to turning around and walking fast; pulling the tired boy along with decided fingers.

It was the start of a period, but Lydia Martin knew exactly what places were empty during the many periods at school; call it a necessity when her need for distractions had once been so dire. It was why she had had no problem or doubt upon leading Stiles to one of the few never-checked broom closets. Her eyes searched the crowd in hopes to find no one looking in their direction; and it wasn't until she had closed the door of that little closet and stood before Stiles, that she reached inside her bag to pull out the wrinkled piece of paper, smoothed it out and placed it against Stiles' chest.

His eyes fell to her hand, lifting his own to hold the paper she had placed against his frame. It was when his eyes fell on the drawing that he immediately understood the reason of her shakiness. "Wha—" He started.

"I don't know." Lydia interrupted, eyes attempting to study Stiles' features as he observed the sheet she had so frightfully ripped back in the classroom. "I didn't even know I was doing it, it's just like before."

Stiles' eyes fell to the paper again, his fingers attempting to smooth out every single inch of the paper as if more details hid in every corner. But there was no more, just the tree with the swirling tornadoes of ink; little swirls that brought forth the very memories that had stopped his sleep. "Lydia?" He whispered, silently wondering upon the connections that his haunted mind was making. "Is this the first one you've done, since…?" He didn't need to say the words; there was no way Lydia, him, or anyone in his group of friends would ever forget what had happened months prior that had to do with the tree in the paper his eyes seemed unable to look away from.

Almost instantly Lydia's head started shaking, and she didn't even think twice before taking the paper from Stiles' hands. Only then did his eyes meet hers. "I wish it was." She admitted as her hands very unceremoniously shoved the paper into her bag once again. "I've drawn it twice before this." She breathed, frowning and shaking her head, suddenly feeling almost trapped in that broom closet, though automatically reaching for his hand in attempts to relax herself by the comfort of his touch; something she'd never outwardly admit on needing, regardless of if it seemed obvious. "Do you think it means anything?"

He did; the connections in his mind scared him, but confused him as well. All this time he thought the smoke from his room, from the shop, that it had all been inside his mind. "I hope not." He simply admitted to her, using his one free hand to hold her one already grasping limb in both of his, caressing her skin gently in what he hoped to be a comforting manner. And he did hope, he hoped with all of his being that he was indeed crazy, that Lydia's drawings were nothing but the doodles of a troubled mind, regardless of if logically he knew better. He hoped; mostly because, if he was wrong, if his hope was wrongly placed, then the danger Deaton had said would come after what Scott, Allison and himself had gone through, had finally arrived.

As if broken from a reverie, Stiles nodded, allowing one of his trapping hands to lift so it could rest at the back of her neck while the other remained holding her own. He leaned closer, noticing the distressed look that had taken home on her features, and pressed a reassuring kiss against her forehead. "We'll be okay." He said, and he didn't know if he was trying to convince Lydia or himself.

She didn't know if she could believe his words, she didn't know if she could let herself hope that they would really be alright; but still, she squeezed his hand for a moment. "Yeah." She nodded, blinking away the truth of her worry for a second, at least long enough to remember she had wanted to interrogate Stiles moments prior. "Are _you_ okay?" She asked, the frown that had prior been frightened now showed in a concerned motion in his direction.

"Me?" He frowned, suddenly worried that _his _worry was actually printed across his forehead and she could see it, that she could see that the hope he'd wished he could have didn't exist. But then he remember the state he found himself in, the tiredness that showed clearly in his eyes, the lack of sleep. "Oh, yeah." He nodded, forcing a smile onto his lips as his eyes fell to look at their entwined hands. "I've just been having nightmares, that's all."

"Nightmares?" Lydia echoed, her free hand tightening on the straps of her bag. Allison had told her the same thing; she'd been having nightmares, about Kate, about her dead aunt. "What about?" She asked, mind swiftly attempting to connect dots and find patterns that could possibly explain the drawings; more importantly, the difference upon them: the black swirls of ink.

Stiles' eyes rose to look at Lydia again as he shifted in place in attempts to right his backpack's placement upon his back. He couldn't help but wonder if he should tell the rest of the pack about the drawings, and he was thinking about what consequences such an action could bring when he realized Lydia had asked him a question. "Nothing." He lied, shaking his head for a couple of seconds as a scoffed and light breath escaped his lips. "They're nothing important, just bad dreams I've been having for a while." Brushing such a statement off didn't make the truth go away, but he could only hope. He didn't know why he was even hiding the information about the black smoke; he never hid stuff like that, not to Scott, not to Lydia. A couple of silence-filled seconds later, Stiles forced himself to speak once again. "Maybe we should get going." He stated, motioning with his head toward the shut door of the broom closet. "You're going to be late to your next class." He managed, aside from the circumstances, to lift his lips in a smile toward the strawberry blonde girl. "People will start thinking your boyfriend is a bad influence on you."

She couldn't help it, Lydia's lips curved into a soft smile to mirror his. Even through the reveals and the discoveries that had been made only moments prior, Stiles Stilinski was still somehow able to make her smile. "No one would think that." She admitted with a shrug of her shoulder. "They'd probably think the opposite." Keeping that little smirk, she flicked her long locks back and away from her shoulder before she extended her hand toward the doorknob.

Stiles smiled, his hands finally free to lift so he could push his backpack properly into place; but it was at that exact moment, when he shifted a little and heard the gentle jingle of his keys, that he remembered the small package he'd forgotten about with all the definitely serious subjects that the two had been talking about. "Oh, Lydia, wait." He said, avoiding being hit by her long strawberry blonde locks solely by an inch due to the fact that he'd turned his frame a little so he could push his backpack to rest against his chest. "I got something for you." He informed her as his hands fiddled with his bag's zipper so he could reach inside. And, carefully, after rummaging around the mess of papers and notebooks that his backpack was, Stiles finally became able to pull out the white jewelry box where the shiny stone-incrusted L shaped necklace he'd bought for her, rested. Closing his backpack with another swift and clumsy motion of his digits, Stiles finally opened the little box and offered it to a quite shocked wide-eyed Lydia Martin. "I was going to give it to you later, but maybe it could cheer you up right now."

It's not that she didn't like being bought things, she loved it, it was the fact that there was absolutely no reason for a gift to be presented to her at that moment; it made her whole frame freeze and a light gasp to escape her lips as her eyes studied the contents of the little offered box. "It's…" She blinked, her hands lifting to hold the little velvet square with careful shifts. "It's beautiful, Stiles. You didn't have to—" She started, her smile widening gently even while he interrupted her words.

"I know, but I wanted to." He said, pushing his free arm into the second strap of his backpack so it could be secured in place and he could have both his hands free.

Lydia couldn't erase the smile from her lips. "Thank you." Slowly, she looked up into the boy's amber hues; even as her dainty digits grasped the little chain of the necklace until it was no longer held within the box. "Could you put it on?" She asked.

Stiles blinked a couple of times, his lips forming a gentle "O" as his head flicked back with sudden strangeness. "Sure." He said, his eyes narrowing for a second. "It's not exactly my style, and I got it for you, but—"

"On me, Stiles." Lydia stated with a grin and a roll of her eyes, amusement and some sort of admiration shining from her greens as she offered the little necklace to her suddenly smiling boyfriend.

"Right; of course." He chuckled, unable to believe he hadn't understood right away. He took the necklace from her fingers and watched as, still with a wide grin adorning her lips, Lydia turned around until she was facing the door, and then he lifted the necklace above her head and down until the cool pendant rested at the hollow of her throat; her hands then lifted so they could push her long strawberry blonde locks aside, and Stiles' tongue escaped his lips at that moment, due to the attempts at closing the clasp of the necklace that he was endeavoring on. _Why do they have to make women's jewelry so damn difficult at the back? _He wondered, literally allowing a cheerful yelp to escape his lips the moment he had successfully managed to finish his job. "Done." He smiled, allowing his hands to fall on her shoulders, and feeling the tips of his fingers grace her collarbone as she turned around to face him once again, before both his hands dropped.

The smile remained, her eyes falling in attempts at admiring the little L pendant that now rested so gently against her skin. "Thank you, Stiles." She repeated, smiling up at him for a second before turning away once again so her hand could rest upon the doorknob in order to open it.

"No problem." He smiled; yet when the creaking of the doorknob turning reached his ears, he quickly reached for her left hand with his right, and tugged softly on it so she could face him again. "Hey, and, Lydia?" He asked as she turned to face him; it wasn't even a second after she had that he tugged on her hand once again so the space between them could disappear as he leaned down until his lips had pressed against hers in a soft caring kiss; the thumb of the hand that held hers gracing the soft skin of the back of her own.

For a few seconds Lydia was surprised; but then her mind caught up and her lips replied to his in swift motions, pulling him closer, her hand balling against the fabric of his shirt; but then she forced herself to pull away. It left both of them light headed, but she brushed the motion off with a smile and a gentle squeeze of her hand to his. "We need to go." She whispered, lips a few inches away from his, her eyes studying his own.

Even then, Stiles nodded, lips pressed on a tight line as if that alone were to make the taste of her lips remain forever. His eyes lowered to look at their hands for a moment, and when he looked up, he smiled genuinely once again. "Yeah, let's go." He chuckled.

Lydia nodded, a smile to mirror his illuminating her features even as she took a step back and forced her hand to let go of his so her frame could turn, and her hand could finally grasp the door's handle to turn it and tug, moving back against Stiles so the door would not hit her, and finally stepping out of the broom closet into the now empty hallways; empty because everyone was in class by that point. "Come on." She said, looking back for a moment, taking his hand, and opening the door further until they could both exit the room.

Stiles' eyes shifted from one side of the hallway to the next, if anything, to make sure no one was there; a smile lifted his lips and a nod bobbed his head as he looked in Lydia's direction once again, a calm, yet tired grin. "See you at lunch." He said, lifting their held hands so he could kiss the back of hers prior to letting go and leaning in to press a short peak to her lips simply because he could, and then turned around to walk away and _run _toward brain hemorrhage inducing History lessons that were bound to be even more difficult to stay awake during due to his eminent tiredness.

"Have fun in History!" Lydia called in his direction, making a smile cross his lips as he hurried toward the stairs. The steps sounded too damn heavy in his ears as he stormed to the second floor of the school to be able to arrive to History class; but he knew that the sound of his steps wasn't actually as loud as he thought it to be; it was nothing but the tiredness sharpening his senses with the bubble of grogginess and need for sleep engulfing his brain in a horrible embrace. Regardless of the fact, he knew he had to get to class, which meant that , against the school rules, he was running.

With nothing to do with the tiredness eating at his brain, though, Stiles stumbled; the palms of his hands landing hard on the cold floor as he barely avoided being hit by _it: _the hallucination; it had to have been a hallucination, right? A big, horrid cloud of black smoke that had lounged toward him with swiftness that he had even been surprised he'd been able to duck in time to avoid it. Ducked? More like fallen to avoid it.

His breath quickened, and his senses awakened as adrenaline pumped through his veins. His head wiped back to look at the dark cloud that hovered inches from the ceiling. "What are you?" He whispered, but then it moved again; hurrying in Stiles' direction.

He stood quick, or as quick as he could possibly manage; the soles of his sneakers squeaking against the floor as he stumbled away from the deadly smoke. Stiles ran, almost sure that he wouldn't be able to outrun it when he _literally _stumbled into his History classroom, shutting the door with a heavy and loud bang after pushing it closed with his foot. He leaned against the palms of his hands just in time to see the black smoke scurrying off into one of the air vents in the hallway.

There was a deafening silence behind the amber eyed boy; nothing but the quickness of his breaths slipping in and out of his lungs. But then… "Mister Stilinski." The voice of his History teacher said behind him, and he turned quick, almost startled by his voice.

It's like Stiles got pushed onto "reality". For his whole being suddenly became aware of the many eyes that rested on him; the shocked expressions from every single one of his classmates. And only one question remained scorching inside his mind:

Did anyone else see _it? _Or was he really losing his mind?

**To Be Continued.**


	4. Chapter 4: Thirteen Reasons Why

It was as if every step he took wasn't taken by him, every word came from his vocal chords, but didn't come from his mind; every blink, every breath, every malevolent smile that reflected on the mirror. It wasn't him, it was _it. _The thing in his head, the one that had taken complete control over him from that strange night when he'd been attacked after practice by a strange cloud of black smoke.

It'd led him to school the next day, lacrosse practice; it'd talked to all of his friends as if it were him, but it hadn't been. Inside, he was yelling at them, _LOOK AT ME! THE REAL ME! LOOK. AT. ME. _But no one noticed; they were all fooled by its act. In more occasions that one, it had led him, his body in its control, to private corners where they could see their reflection; they, because he was in a prison inside his own mind, and _it_ controlled the rest. His eyes stared back at him in the mirror, only it looked as if he were looking from behind a window pane; as if he wasn't looking at himself at all. It had been at that moment when he'd noticed the dark voids of black that invaded his once familiar chocolate hues. "You see, Danny?" His voice echoed many times during those short private moments with the intruder. "You see how every single one of them goes on without you?" It taunted. "How they don't even _notice _you're not… you?" Danny's eyes; no, _it's _eyes narrowed upon the reflection, and any speck of light from the bulbs above his head that had illuminated their dark hue was completely gone. It truly looked as if whatever shade had overpowered them had burnt through Danny's optics like coal on a fire, leaving nothing behind. "Pay close attention." It whispered with his voice. "You have to play close attention."

Danny wanted to move, he wanted to tell his intruder to shut up, to get the hell out of him and go annoy someone else. His life was _fine; _he didn't care if he was ignored, he didn't care if no one in Beacon Hills remembered his name when he was gone. He didn't really expect to stay in contact with any of them anyway, ever. Ethan, maybe, but even he felt like a temporary stop in his journey due to the werewolf thing.

Danny wouldn't say he loved Ethan; but that also didn't mean that it didn't hurt when his intruder had lead him toward the tall, short haired, Adonis that was his boyfriend. It's what one of the things that had hurt the most of that day: his intruder controlled his body so that he slammed Ethan against the lockers in the changing rooms. "Whoa." He had said, and then Danny's intruder willed his body to kiss him; so hard and passionately that it almost felt like _Danny _was the one intruding. But he screamed; Danny screamed again and again for the black eyed intruder to stop. To stop kissing Ethan, to stop acting as if it were him.

And even worse than any of that had been the manner in which the intruder had led Danny through a full day of clueless looks, friendly chatter and pointless flirting, and no one ever noticed the fact that Danny was acting out of character. Not once did any of his friends wondered why he suddenly walked as if he owned the whole school, no one ever noticed that he was not paying attention in class and instead was writing seemingly incoherent sentences on his notebook as he had an internal battle of ask and answer with the black eyed being, not lifting his hand _once _to answer any question that his teachers asked. No one lifted a brow when he barely spoke during lunch, and Ethan never realized that he wouldn't ever attack him with kisses the way he had in front of the _whole _lacrosse team due to the fact that he wasn't one for very public displays of affection. Sure, he could be wild, he _was_ wild… but in private. Yet… apparently, his boyfriend hadn't known him enough to find something like _that _strange.

Sure, Danny never expected to be thought of as important in that, his town of the strange and unusual; but to truly realise how incredibly unimportant he was... well, it hurt. "Did you see?" His voice whispered in the lowest of tones as the intruder led him forth toward his home, steps slow, yet steady, as if they had all the time in the world. "Did you see the way each one of the people you think know you, couldn't care... less?" _No, that's not true. _Danny replied in his mind; he wanted to scream, and he was, but he wanted to hear it erupt from his mouth. He wanted his vocal chords to break with intensity as he yelled for help, any help; but instead what came out was laughter, deep, dark, monstrous laughter that would have sent chills though his spine if he were the one in control; but he felt nothing. _Leave! _He screamed inside his head, which only caused his intruder to laugh; the sounds leaving his lips controlled fully by it and its demonic tones. "You are a fool, boy." It said, holding tightly onto the strap of Danny's backpack. "But we're not done for the day." _For the day? _Danny wondered, Would that mean it was going to let him go?

But of course the intruder laughed again. To hear his voice making such strange sounds was horrible; to hear it, to feel the air leaving his lungs in small lapses as it laughed. "What's so damn funny?" A female voice called, and when the intruder turned his head, Danny saw his mum. _No, _he thought. _Not her. _

"Nothing." His voice said. "Something I read on the way home." But they weren't his words; his intruder wasn't done, he was putting on the horribly fake act of being him once again. The fake tone of concern that adorned his voice was foreign to Danny, mostly because he _never _spoke like that. "Are you going somewhere, mother?" It asked, mocking him with every word. He would never call her that; it was always 'mom'; mom, mom, _MOM! _Danny yelled, but nothing left his lips.

"Book club." His mum replied. "I left some dinner on the table okay?" She said, slipping her keys inside her straw purse. "Don't wait up!"

_What!? _Danny thought. _No way. _"Of course." His voice spoke again. "Have fun!" _Nooo! _Danny had to do something; how could he be so trapped? How could he be so useless? _LET ME GOOOO_ "OOOO!" _Wait.. _"Mom!" It was Danny, _he_ had said that. How had he even—

"Yes?" His mum said, turning around to face him. "What?" She asked, standing a few feet away from him by the corner of the garden.

But he couldn't move, couldn't even blink. All day long Danny had been trying to fight against that intruder of his, and now that he had.. "Mom," he repeated, "I think you need to call—_me when you get safely there, okay?" _Danny had felt it; some sort of push inside his brain, inside his being that just stopped him from whatever it was he had achieved for a few seconds; he was a prisoner again.

The intruder moved his body forward to walk toward his confused mum, and it wrapped his arms around her. "I love you, mother." It said, and Danny wanted to scream again. Could he do it? Could he somehow manage to push the bastard back enough to tell her to help him.

"I love you too, Danny." She replied in a somewhat confused tone. "Are you okay?" Well, at least she'd noticed something was wrong with her son.

He needed to speak again, he needed to do whatever it was he'd done before, he needed to— "Yeah, I'm just tired." His voice spoke, making him want to scream once again. "Going to sleep for a bit. Have fun!" And then the intruder led them away from her and into the house. _No. _Danny thought. _No, no! I need to speak to her! _He wanted to tell her that he needed someone to help him. "I don't know how you managed that bit of strength, little man," it stated with dark spite, "but I assure you, it will be your last attempt." His voice whispered upon his command as the door of his home shut with a loud bang.

Not even thirty minutes later, Danny was staring at his black eyed reflection again; sweat beads glistening under the glimmers of light. He'd been fighting; attempting to, at least, and just like the short amount of time he had been able to break free before, he had been able to do again. But his intruder was angry now, even as it forced his hand to write the words of something that looked _too _much like the last words of a desperate soul; not the kind of thing Danny would ever write at all. Spots of ink here and there, splattered the page from the short moments he had been able to fight back, but to no avail; and Danny was starting to get tired, truly and fully, and because of it his intruder had become stronger. _I can't go on, _the splattered letter read, _I am tired, and I am sorry, but I see no way out; I have chosen to escape my own boring and pointless reality where all I feel is pain inside. All I feel is dread and sadness as I push forward one day after another in a pointless routine. This life will lead me nowhere. _

Danny was crying; at least there, in the little prison inside his head, he was crying. The dire realisation of what had been happening in town... _Has this been it? _He wondered, had those other people that were thought of as victims of suicide in town go through what he was going through at that very moment? The fight, the horrible realisations all throughout the day? Was Danny truly watching the very last moments of his life through the eyes of a stranger? _Stop. _He thought, again and again until it felt like an endless loop that no one but he could hear. His intruder was done, he was smiling by the moment the pen hit the desk again.

It was a short moment; truly only a passing thought, but suddenly Danny wondered if there was at all any point on trying to fight against it anymore. Regardless of how long the thought remained and shortly after left, the horrid black eyed intruder caught up on it. "That's right, little boy." He taunted. "Give up. You are nothing anymore; you will be nothing because I have the power to end you, I have the _will _to end you." He spoke no more.

Instead, the intruder led his body up from the chair in front of the desk and toward the washroom in the hall; Danny wanted to keep screaming, and he did, he wanted to keep fighting, to believe that he had some sort of chance against such an unknown creature, but he simply couldn't. He was too tired, he was as exhausted as he would be if he had run the furthest distance. _Please. _Danny thought weakly, more tired that he dared acknowledge, but once the black eyed reflection looked back at him again, now from the mirror in the washroom, it only shook his head. The smirk that adored his lips in the reflection was unfamiliar; eerie accompanied by the glistening black hue of the intruder's eyes, and then, just like that, the intruder willed his hand to lift, balling into a fist as it did, and then connected with the mirror in a strong motion forward, shattering his reflection into small, sharp, different sized pieces.

Danny could feel the warmth of blood ooze from the places the contact of his fist on the mirror had wounded the flesh, and this time, he screamed in his head in pain; no sound left his lips while controlled by _it. _It willed to move his body slowly, now, as if saving each second of the moment in the mind that had invaded everything but the little corner where Danny found himself prisoner. He could hear the soft clicking of glass upon glass, soft little noises that broke the otherwise completely still silence; and only when it willed Danny's eyes to see what it was doing, did the trapped boy realise that it was now holding one of the longer pieces of broken mirror that had fallen on the sink, and his hand tightened around it upon his command, sending sharp pangs of pain all throughout Danny's arm.

This time, the scream did leave his lips; but whatever couple of seconds he had unconsciously managed to gain in his favour were just as quickly lost once the scream turned into laughter. Echoing waves of it that made an already horrible situation worse; it was enjoying the moment. It was enjoying every second.

When the laughter finally died down it wasted no time; the arm that held the sharp glass lifted a couple of inches in the air before striking down until the sharpest end of the broken mirror had stabbed the inside of his wrist. At first Danny felt nothing; shock ran too deep within him to even feel a thing, but then his hand moved commanded by him, forcing the glass to rip the skin of his arm apart as if it were a door in a prison slowly opening to let a tortured inmate escape; only Danny remained.

Blood; red, bright blood dripped in unstoppable motions down his arm and onto the once white tiled floor. It laughed again, with his voice; but this time Danny was screaming too loud inside his head for the sound to echo any louder than a whisper. But then there was silence, and more pain. It had willed Danny's body to move once again so that the already tainted glass could paint the same bloody picture on his right arm, only this time Danny couldn't scream. This time he was simply too weak.

Warm sensations tingled his skin as every drop of blood fell from his exposed wounds, and his voice, sounding far stronger than Danny felt in the little corner of his slowly darkening mind, spoke once again. "I win." It said, and then he felt the same horrible sensation of fire tearing apart his throat the way in which two days prior he had when the black cloud of smoke had attacked him, only now it was leaving him.

Danny watched with tired eyes as that same cloud of smoke escaped swiftly through his lips, and once the last speck of it disappeared, he could hold himself upright no longer. First it was his knees, then his back, then his head, all falling slowly onto the ever growing pool of blood at his feet in what felt like slow motion. He had been asking to feel, to be able to move on his own, to be able to speak for the past day and a half, and now he was too weak to even move; the warm trickling continued upon his arms, warm, surrounding him by then, beside his head, under him, around his frame; his blood.

In the distance, the echoing of a phone ringing tooted in the walls of the house as Danny's eyes fell closed. One ring, two rings, thee... _beep. _"Hi, this is the Mahealani household, please leave a message after the tone." Said a bored version of the voice that belonged to the boy that now laid on the floor unmoving. Even then, in the slowly increasing darkness, Danny could remember recording such a message for his mum.

"Hiiii, honey!" Came the sound of his mother from the voicemail she was leaving. "You told me to call you once I got to Janine's house." Her voice echoed even further away for the fading boy. "I'm here now, so don't worry your tired head about me. Though judging by your lack of answer I'm assuming you're asleep." A short giggle. "Anyway, love you honey! See you later!" _beep. _

Her last few words sounded like the very distant echo inside the longest tunnel, and the last thought in the boy's mind was that the last his mother had seen of him had been nothing but a shadow; someone that hadn't truly been him.

Danny whispered one last weak call for her before everything went black.

_**~Two days later~**_

A school day like any other, where he woke up, took a shower, ate his cereal and went to school with next to no worry in the world; that was what that day should have been for Stiles Stilinski. Everything was meant to be over, the nightmares, the stupid following black smoke, the fear of evil lurking in the shadows of his room. But no; it hadn't stopped.

Not even the presence of Lydia Martin in his room two days prior had stopped the nightmares. She'd come to him for comfort after having had one of her Banshee episodes; one that had made her end up in Danny Mahleani's front door, and clearly too late, for when she got there, their friend was being wheeled away with a sheet over his whole body. A suicide, they said, but... well, Scoot and his pack highly doubted it.

Regardless, Lydia had gone to Stiles for comfort, and it had all ended with her falling asleep in his arms. _Stiles _had been supposed to be the one to comfort her, yet, instead, when in his dreams he had seen her die by his hand at least five times that night, she had comforted him after waking up screaming so loudly that he had truly been surprised he hadn't a_ctually _killed her of a heart attack.

And last night it had been the Sheriff's turn. Waking up from killing Lydia, to killing his dad, only to wake up from that again to kill someone else he loved as if he were stuck in a loop of dreams that he was only able to wake up from with the loudest scream his lungs could master. It made the boy start wondering what was truly real and what wasn't. For one side he knew Lydia was alive, he'd made sure of it by texting her before leaving to school; she'd replied, of course. And his dad? Well, let's just say he had been incredibly confused for all of ten seconds when the amber eyed boy wrapped his arms around him while the Sheriff was making himself some coffee. "Nightmares again?" He had asked, as if he hadn't burst into his room once again, no gun this time, to calm the boy down.

The whole occurrence became so frequent as of late, that the sheriff no longer left the need to bring a gun to save him from harm; he knew that what haunted his son couldn't possibly be terminated by a gun, unless he decided to shoot the troubled boy in the head in order to end with the nightmares, but... well, that was not going to happen.

Regardless of such actions, Stiles had wished for that day to be different; he'd wished for himself to be able to have a peaceful day where he could just... be at peace. Yet, there he was; heart beating as fast as the engine of the blue Jeep he was currently driving, his eyes red and bloodshot from lack of sleep, and his knuckles almost impossibly pale due to the force with which his hand was gripping the steering wheel.

Tired eyes flicked from the open road behind him to his rearview mirror and back toward the road, because there it was again: the pitch black smoke; following and hovering over him like a cloud from a cartoon awaiting to zap its victim with an electric charge. Had the situation been any different, Stiles might actually have laughed. But, no, he was aware of the cloud above him, breaths came in panted rhythms as a couple of silent tears dropped from his eyes, probably because the boy refused to blink; it made him feel as if he were in a Doctor Who episode, with those horrid statues that kill one by touch and move if one blinks.

"Go away, go away." Stiles whispered in a chant. _Public_, he thought, he had to go into a public place for the cloud to leave; it was his logic, due to the fact that the last time it had come for him he had been lucky enough to burst into his History class. But now? Well... he was in an open road; a couple of miles from the hospital, a few couple more from the school, which was his original destination.

His eyes flicked to the rearview mirror once again, and he noticed the cloud was closer. "Go away!" He yelled at it; but it only moved even nearer. That was when he lost it; he lost complete control of the car. On his attempt to avoid the cloud from touching him, Stiles had turned the wheel so quick that only ten seconds later his Jeep was laying on its side.

Thankfully enough, Stiles had had his seatbelt on; which only provoked a short whiplash. But adrenaline pumped in quick motions through his veins, quicker than he could even imagine his heart could manage, and though he could feel a scorching pain on his arm, the moment Stiles opened his eyes again and unbuckled the belt, his forearm stopped him from falling headfirst onto the ground, he managed to crawl out of the car; a wet, sticky feeling reigning over the back of his forearm.

When he stood, turning around to see the sideways mess that his beloved Roscoe was, Stiles' eyes flicked up to the hovering cloud above it. It was as if it'd been waiting; waiting to see if he'd survived the crash, maybe? He didn't know. All he was even aware of was that he turned around, ignoring the burning, wet feeling on the back of his arm, and ran. Ran as quickly as his legs could carry him.

This time his destination didn't matter; he only had one goal: to be in a public space and away from the haunting smoke. And he hoped he could make it, because Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital was no longer miles away; all he had to do was run. _Run. _

Run, and Don't. Look. Back.

_Run. _

**To Be Continued.**


	5. Chapter 5: Black Smoke'd Secret

"Do it, alright? He needs to be readied for surgery." Melissa McCall nodded kindly toward a nurse that attempted to convince her the idea wasn't a good one, but she left, making the tired brunette emit a sigh and return to her position at the back of the desk. It had been a long day; a truly long day, she was glad she only had a few minutes left of it. She was thinking about such a fact with nearly relieved motions, when a shaky voice reached her ears in a nearly ignorable tone. She wouldn't ignore it, thought, not with her job, not with her kindness; but she was not expecting to see her son's best friend standing shaky and bleeding right in front of her. "Stiles?" She asked quickly, feet leading her away from the back of the desk toward the distraught boy, hands immediately outstretched in search to aid him. "Are you alright?"

His breath came jaded, his eyes stung with the manner in which he had not dared blink, and his hands, as he noticed at that moment, were trembling. He'd made it; _I made it? _He thought. _I'm safe? _Fear and confusion streaked eyes lifted to look in Melissa's direction, who he hadn't exactly recognised until she had laid eyes on her. "I..." He heard himself trying to speak, voicing with shaky breaths as his brow furrowed. "I don't know. I-I guess..." He could still feel the burning on his forearm, and his eyes lifted away from Melissa's in search of the horrid smoke that had been following; but when he found nothing, his eyes lowered once again toward his hands, and only one thought echoed in his mind: _Have I lost my mind? _"I guess not really?"

It was all it took for Melissa to shake herself away from her watching position in order to approach Stiles and place a hand around his shoulder and another on his harmed arm. "Alright, kiddo." She said, but the rest of her words echoed as if in the furthest tunnel for the boy. He was in shock, and everything around him moved in blurs. "Come with me." The couple of steps down the hallway after she'd given instructions to some other nurses to step back echoed so far away that, seconds later, when a loud snap tooted against his ears, it was so loud that it forced his lids to blink, once, twice, three times, making gentle tears fall against his cheeks from the dryness he'd cursed them with. Amber orbs fell to look into Melissa's own before his head bobbed in a nod. He was there, standing in front of her, but all he could think about was the smoke, the crash. How had he been able to run after _that_? He could feel Melissa's hands, and he was a hundred percent aware that they were both moving; but surely they moved faster than he believed they were, because everything was happening in slow motion in his yes, and then in fast forward. A blur of faces and places all around him, and all he could do was attempt to breathe, remain aware, remain wide awake in case the black smoke was near. He'd lost it. There was no question about it. He had absolutely lost it.

Moments later, the door of the closest empty room clicked shut, and the kind brunette led Stiles toward the bed. It was then, when she faced him completely that she realised he was having signs of a panic attack that seemed to be mixed with the shock. "Stiles." She said, attempting to lower her frame enough to look him straight in the eye. "Stiles, I need you to count to three, okay? Slowly." She nodded. "Breathe in counts of three and say the number." Even as she spoke she lifted a pen light in order to check his eyes. And she wasn't at all surprised when she realised the dilatation she found in them when she did.

He could see the bright light in front of him, he could hear Melissa's words in a far away echo, but he heard it nonetheless; his eyes blinked again and his lips parted as reddened hues tried focusing on his best friend's mom. "One..." He heard himself saying, though it sounded almost as distant as Melissa's own voice. "Two." _Breathe, Stiles, breathe. _He chanted in his mind, forcing himself to breathe as deeply as he dared, seeing the nurse in front of him while his heart attempted beating down onto a normal pace again. A soft fear filled whimper left his lips as his eyes squeezed shut, stinging from their once lack of blink. He'd started breathing quickly again. "One!" He repeated louder, encouraged by Melissa; she continued standing near him, but this time her face started to become clearer to the boy. Breathing deeply again, he nodded at her. "Two." His fingers gripped tight against the edge of the bed, and he became even more aware of the stinging on his arm. Staring right at the nurse with tears in his eyes, Stiles finally said the last number. "Three." He became completely aware of where he was even if is heart continued beating as if it were to leave its cavity. All Stiles could do was force himself to keep breathing.

"You're alright." She said, attempting a comforting smile in his direction. "You're okay now." With careful movements, her hands aided the amber eyed boy in removing his damaged red hoodie so she could finally examine the wound on his bleeding arm. "You're going to need stitches." She stated, her head shaking from side to side for a moment as she frowned; finally looking up at him once again. "What happened?" She asked, careful as she left the hoodie by his side and slowly turned his arm.

His body moved automatically, but his mind was almost a hundred percent focused on Melissa's words. His lips parted to speak, but the words got stuck in his throat. What _had _happened? How could he possibly explain to his best friend's mother what he had just been through without sounding like a complete lunatic? Answer was: he couldn't. Regardless, he tired. "I... I crashed." He said. "My car, it..." His eyes lifted to meet hers again while he forced himself to take another deep breath. "It flipped over. I had my seat belt on, but I had to run, or..." _Stop. _He thought, feeling as if his heart were about to start beating wildly again; as if the memory alone would return him from sanity into the complete opposite. He didn't know what else to say. He could only shake his head.

"Wait, you _ran _here?" She said, shocked, stopping her actions for a moment and looking at Stiles with concern stricken eyes. "From where?" She asked, only moving in order to search the room for cotton pads, and supplies to clean his wounds. Only, before he even replied, she turned around to face him again. "Is it okay if I stitch you up, or do you want me to get a doctor?"

Stiles' head simply bobbed in an affirmative nod toward the woman before his words were able to follow and leave his lips in response to her last question. "Yeah, you, of course." Truth was, now that he was slowly gaining back his mind, he was glad it had been Melissa that had seen him first instead of any other doctor. Had it been, he probably would be in a worse state of panic than he had been only moments ago. Stiles trusted Scott's mom as much as he trusted his own dad. So, before he could let himself start thinking too much about what had happened _before _he had started running, he allowed himself to answer Melissa's first question. "I ran, like... Three? Four miles?" His eyes fell from her direction to his one unharmed hand. "I was on my way to school when I saw—when it happened." He blinked repeatedly at his near slip. _Stay quiet. _It was almost a command; a command from his sane self telling him not to speak of insanity. He listened.

The frown in Melissa's forehead shifted from concern to short suspicion, because she'd heard it. Having a son that couldn't lie as well as he wished he could, she had grown used to paying attention at small spilt details of someone's speech, and the small withholding of information in Stiles' explanation hadn't gone unnoticed. "That's a very long way to run after hitting your head." She admitted, the suspicion slowly bleeding into her words as she placed some utensils, of which Stiles only felt the need to acknowledge the needles, on a silver tray she placed on the bed after pushing his hoodie away. "Fold your arm, and keep it as steady as possible." She requested, sitting down on a stool as silver as the tray she'd placed beside him, and slipping on a pair of yellow rubber gloves.

As if all his eyes could do now was blink, Stiles nodded in her direction, doing as she asked him to and keeping his arm folded and raised in the air, then resting his elbow where she told him to so he didn't have to do as such; the familiar care coming from Melissa made him feel a little better, and he became able to breathe without fearing that, if he didn't take deep breaths, he'd enter into a state of panic once again. She helped him that much; but still, he didn't know if he should peak, if he should say exactly what he had seen and what had had him running with nothing but adrenaline to help him toward the first public place he'd been able to find. He watched as she wetted a cotton pad with a liquid prior to focusing on cleaning his wound; a small concerned frown remained across his forehead as he watched her, his lips parted as if that alone were to allow more breath to enter his lungs. "You know you can trust me, right?" She suddenly asked as if she'd read his mind, looking up into Stiles' amber hues while wetting a second cotton pad; he hadn't realised he'd felt no pain the first time until the second time he had to wince. Something that just made Melisa's head shake and a short apology to leave her lips. His grip on the bed tightened as she continued cleaning the wound itself. All Melissa could do was hurry, and state the reality of what she wanted him to know in attempts to distract him from what she couldn't stop doing. "I have a werewolf for a son," She smiled, shaking her head once, yet focusing on what she was doing. "I'm pretty sure that whatever it is you tell me you think I won't believe, I will at least give it the benefit of the doubt."

As if blinking was Stiles' new language, he allowed his lips to curve in the smallest of smiles. Forgetting she knew about the supernatural side of Beacon Hills was sometimes easy to do, yet, with Scott as a son, Stiles doubted there was much the woman didn't know about everything that had been going on in town. For a short moment Stiles attempted to use the coolness of the alcohol on the undamaged skin to serve as a distraction, yet, once again, when the damn substance hit the place where Stiles guessed he'd hurt himself, he winced once again. Melissa held him in place, but he _had _jumped a bit; it was as if that had been kick start enough for him to decide to trust Miss McCall. "You can't tell Scott." He said with determined eyes as he looked up in her direction. Why had he said that? Why did something inside him not want Scott to know? Why was he sweating? His healthy hand lifted to get rid of some droplets of sweat that had trickled down his forehead.

Melissa remained quiet for a few moment as she placed the used cotton pads in a garbage bin; then her hands seemed busy readying a needle with a substance that Stiles could only imagine served to numb his arm. As she did such a thing she thought over the possible agreement to not tell her son the things his friend wanted to confide her with; an ordeal that came to a short end once she reached for his arm and aligned the needle somewhere _very _close to the wound. "Okay." She said, nodding once. "Talk to me." And even though she knew such a promise would probably end up hitting her on the behind, she also knew using his speech as distraction over the needle was good enough a tactic.

His head bobbed in another nod; he knew Melissa knew what she was doing, so he didn't worry much over _most _of it all. Instead he was more worried over how he could explain what had happened what felt like days before but had only been that very morning. "I've been having horrible nightmares every night." He looked away to the complete opposite direction of the nurse; he knew she knew what she was doing... but that didn't mean he was less uncomfortable around needles. "And I think they're all tied to this..." He paused, lids fluttering after feeling the tip of the needle exiting his flesh with a horrible sting due to the place she'd had to inject him in. But his head shook once as if that alone could give him the strength he needed to keep talking. "...black smoke that has been following me." Stiles knew exactly how it sounded; and actually? It sounded ten times worse than he originally thought it would.

There was a short silence, one in which Melissa's hands got rid of the syringe and other unnecessary things before she sat down on the stool once again; and only once she rested before him and pinched his arm after a few seconds did she speak again. "Did you feel that?" She asked.

"Not really." He answered, gulping back a knot that had formed in the middle of his throat and blinking again.

She nodded. "What do you mean black smoke?" She finally wondered aloud as her hands moved to ready the needle so she could start stitching his wound.

He didn't answer right away, of course; he didn't know how to. And this time he actually had to force himself to breathe; not because he was going to have another attack by thinking about the smoke, but because, a few moments later, he could feel the needle's pinches in the form of gentle taps against his skin every time a stitch was made. "The black smoke, it..." Melissa knew him well enough to want to keep him talking; yet, most of Stiles wished it wasn't about _that _subject specifically, regardless of if it was kind of nice to talk to someone about what had been tormenting him for so long. Sure, it made him feel even crazier, but... "It's alive." He told her before shaking his head, forcing his eyes to remain far from her hands and even her face, just in case. But he didn't have to even look at her to know she'd found such a statement strange; her hands had stopped moving for a few seconds before resuming their work. "Look, I know how that sounds." He exhaled somewhat loudly, trying not to move. "But I mean it; it's like one of those rain clouds in cartoons, only it's black, and huge, and made of smoke, and it follows me as if it were waiting to strike. I..." His head shook again, thoughts rushing wildly once again as he tried keeping his mind away from the needle Melissa kept driving into his skin while also attempting to believe he hadn't actually lost his mind for good.

"Alright." She said, frowning for a moment. "I believe you." She frowned, looking up at Stiles' features with a concerned expression for a quick second prior to lowering her eyes to look at her work once again. "You say you're having nightmares?" She asked, watching him as he nodded; his appearance, other than the dishevelled clothes and the wounds she was working on, seemed to be paler than usual, his eyes were nearly red and bloodshot. "How many hours of sleep are you getting?" She suddenly asked him.

_She doesn't believe me. _Stiles thought as a sigh escaped his lips and his eyes lowered to look at his lap. He didn't blame her; to be honest, if he were in her shoes, he probably wouldn't believe himself either. "Eight." He replied, anyway.

"A night?" She asked, keeping her eyes on his arm.

"The last three days." His eyes didn't lift, but once again he could feel Melissa's hands stopping their work in order to look at him in silence for a few seconds.

She could only nod at the information, lowering her eyes to look at her work once again and allowing a silence to continue until she'd placed the last stitch on his arm. "All done." She said with a little forced smile, setting the needle and bloody cotton pads down before reaching for a bandage to wrap Stiles' forearm with. "You need to stay here for observation, alright?" Her eyes lifted to emphasize her words; at such a statement his eyes finally fell on hers again. "I will talk to a doctor, but you need to stay." She nodded. "Running after being in a car crash the way you describe it is not something that should be taken lightly; you may need an MRI to check for concussions, Stiles."

Suddenly his face was twisted into an expression of disagreement, fear and nerves that had almost nothing to do with the smoke he'd talked to her about. He'd been about to thank her when she'd spoken out the very words he had feared she would say. His eyes nearly pleaded her to let him go, and his whole body sunk in disappointment as his head attempted to shake. "No, please." He begged. "I can't stay; I'm already behind in homework as it is. And then it would freak Scott out, and you'd have to tell my dad, and..." Why was he so intent on not telling anyone? Why was he so suddenly scared of staying in a place where he was probably safer? His head shook in confusion and the dire need to make the nurse let him leave.

"I can't let you leave, okay?" Melissa told him in a tone that stated the end of the inexistent argument as she stood to get rid of all the things she'd used on the different disposal containers.

"_Please_, I—" He started, confused, scared and nervous all at once.

"Stiles!" She interrupted, smiling comfortingly in his direction as she moved back to rest a hand against his shoulder. "You're staying, end of discussion." She nodded. "I need you to answer some questions for me, okay?"

He didn't want to give up, he wanted to somehow find a way to make her agree of his dismissal, but he knew Melissa McCall as well as he knew his own father. She'd spoken, her word was final. And shouldn't he be glad he was staying somewhere public and crowded for a while? Shouldn't he be glad he was going to be somewhere safe? "Okay." He replied, defeated and with a nod.

"Right." She said, turning away from him for a moment as a question escaped her inquiring lips. "Just answer honestly, alright?" She looked at him again and watched him nod. "Good." She paused. "Have you been feeling irritable?"

"Yeah..." He didn't even take two seconds to answer, but even then the reply escaped in a questioning tone. "Possibly..." He frowned. "To the point of homicide."

She turned away from him once again to walk toward a cabinet near the bed. "Inability to focus?" She wondered, the sound of jingling keys reaching the boy, making him attempt to see what she was doing.

"No, I—the Aderall's not working." He replied with a sigh, lowering his eyes and shaking his head. He began to feel slightly frustrated.

"Impulsive behaviour?" Melissa's voice tooted questioningly, her hands moving before her, yet her back blocking the view for Stiles.

It made him almost immediately start wondering if she was asking such question in order to get to a point. "More than my usual?" He asked, taking a breath before quickly shaking his head. "Hard to tell."

Melissa's head nodded slowly. "Vivid dreams during the day." It was a statement, one that bled with the knowledge of what he'd told her, and which showed clear upon her moving features. All of it made Stiles realise that she most likely _did _know what was going on.

He had no other option than nodding his head once. "Okay, basically all of the above." He frowned, watching Melissa walk back toward him with a determined stance and even the hint of a smile playing on her lips. "You know what this is?" And for a moment Stiles started thinking that maybe the horrid black smoke that had been following him had been nothing but a mere hallucination, that he _was _actually crazy; as horrifying as it was, he welcomed the thought, because at least it meant no new supernatural thing was roaming the streets of Beacon Hills. All in all, Stiles hoped.

After a few seconds, Melissa finally stopped walking, standing in front of him; she nodded, unable to remove the smile from her lips. "I think so." She looked at him, but she didn't say anything else.

And it didn't matter, because the only thing Stiles had been able to focus on was that there was a brand new syringe held between her stable fingers. "W-what's that?" He wondered, amber hues flickering from the needle to the woman's chocolate hues as he narrowed his own softly.

For a moment she simply smiled, her eyes falling on the needle in her hands before looking in Stiles' direction once again. "Do you trust me?" She wondered, kindness bleeding from her every word.

The boy's eyes searched Melissa's for any sign that he could get out of the situation, but he found none. So he simply blinked and allowed a soft retort to escape his lips. "When you're holding a needle?" He looked down, concerned, yet surprisingly somewhat hopeful.

Melissa's lips lifted in a wider smile that accompanied the breathy laugh that escaped them; yet she moved, much to Stiles' surprise, to lift his sleeve and wet a small area of his shoulder with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball. "It's... Midazolam." She informed as she injected Stiles, watching the way his eyes squeezed shut for a short moment after the pinch from the needle. Once it was over, Stiles' eyes fell to look at his arm once again. "It's a sedative."

It was those words that shocked Stiles' eyes into lifting to look at his best friend's mother; confusion was clearly printed in them. "Why did you give me a sedative?" He wondered; he felt as if he were to step into another nightmare if Melissa got him to actually sleep.

"Because you, Stiles," she paused, looking at him, "are one profoundly sleep deprived young man." She replied, placing her hands on both his shoulders and smiling gently and comfortingly. "You need rest." She nodded. "And you need it now." With a gentle push, she started helping him lower his frame onto the bed. "Lay down."

"But, the nightmares, what if—" He asked, pausing to take a breath as he slowly moved along with her motions. He wished to be safe; safe from the smoke, safe from everything, but when he looked at his bandage he felt suddenly vulnerable; yet... as the seconds ticked by, he didn't seem to mind.

"You're safe here." Melissa soothed, helping him get comfortable on the bed. "You're going to be okay."

"Okay." He nodded. "Okay... uhm..." His throat cleared. "Exactly how long does it take to..." He was laying down, and he could feel as Melissa helped with the pillows under his head, yet suddenly a need to close his eyes started invading him. "Whoa..." Melissa somehow managed to pull the sheets on top of him. He'd faded off and even found himself having to lean on the nurse more than before. He found himself reassured by her presence. "Apparently not that long." He finished as he continued feeling like the room started to get blurry; all his fears, his worries, they were all slowly being dissipated by the blurry spots that were suddenly reigning his eyes. For the first time in what felt like months, Stiles felt a hundred percent calm.

Melissa's smile remained as he aided the young man in getting as comfortable as possible; she was turning away when suddenly she found herself surprised by his hand capturing hers in a light hold. She looked at him, wondering if he were going to tell her something, but when he didn't, she simply nodded once again, soothing him with a gentle touch to the forehead. "Just get some rest." She whispered.

Stiles could feel the comfort of the mattress under him at one point, and he truly stopped being aware of things around him; Melissa's voice sounded distant, lighter, even familiar. And he felt a warmth he hadn't felt in the longest time. A memory flashed in blurry circles inside his mind as his breath became softer... _He was a kid again; younger than he could have thought possible to remember, laying on a small bed and looking up into the beautiful brown eyes of his mother. Her smile gave him the warmth that any innumerable amount of blankets couldn't give him. "I'm not going anywhere, Stiles." Claudia said, covering his little body with the Star Wars sheets he had begged his father to buy for him when he was little. _"Thanks, Mom." He told the memory, not ever even truly realising he'd spoken the words out loud before he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

**To Be Continued.**


	6. Chapter 6: Tall Guy

If it had been any other day no one would have missed her arrival, with her brand new notebooks in her My Chemical Romance hand bag and her pencil case full of new utensils. They might have even noticed her nerves, her excitement, or at the very least eyes would have turned at the luxurious black BMW that swiftly went past the "Welcome to Beacon Hills High" sign in search of an empty parking space, and finally stopped beside a silver Toyota not too many steps away from the main entrance to the school. They might have noticed her long black curls, the shades that hid beautiful crystal blue hues, the steps she took confidently even as her eyes rested on the screen of her phone; if anyone was really observant they might have seen her nerves or the manner in which she looked from side to side as every newcomer did. They might have noticed as one of her hands slipped inside her leather jacket pocket prior to lifting the strap of her bag over her head until it fell against her shoulder so the strap could cross against her chest. If it were any other day some would have noticed the curiosity with which she searched about the main floor of the school for the main office, maybe someone might have even helped her find it; but this was no usual day in Beacon Hills High School, that day everyone was in mourning.

The air was somber, teachers and students alike as the reality of the most recent suicide settled upon the friends of the victim; Danny Mahealeni's locker door shone adorned with flowers, pictures, notes, all from people who had known him, all from people who were missing him. Between that and the absence of the 'pack's human', Stiles Stilinski, Isaac Lahey felt stressed and distracted. He felt as if he were being riddled with little pin pricks nagging and prodding at him to turn around to offer his assistance to that which he considered his pack and family; he had to ignore those pin pricks, though, ignore the feeling that he needed to talk to Scott McCall because it would be especially suspicious if his whole 'group' just wounded up missing school at the same time. He was in close watch as it was, what better way to get the truancy officer called on him than missing class from what could appear to be a friend-wide event? His guardian, Melissa McCall wouldn't be at all happy about such a fact, especially if it was both teenagers in her care getting in trouble.

Either way, with his nerves all in a bundle, seemingly everyone in his group being absent from school, and his repetitive need to check the empty notifications on his phone, Isaac Lahey ended up rushing through the halls of the school with his eyes and mind everywhere but where he was going; at least any further than knowing that he was attempting to nestle himself down in a desk for the first class of the day to simply absorb himself into the background. And because of it, he simply saw _her _way too late.

One second , he was making a mad dash through the hallway, people and cusses avoided purely by memory of the twists and turns of the school as well as the habitual people in it; the next, his tall frame had collided against someone he had never before met. He'd seen her, yes, with no more than half a second to spare, thus, not enough time to take evasive action. "Whoa!" He heard from the girl as everything in her hands flew away from her grasp and her frame fell backwards toward the ground in a rather ungraceful manner. _Perfect. _Isaac thought, looking at the girl's frame with a frozen stance. He could see a schedule and a map of the school somewhere in between the mess her stuff was on the floor. _Let's injure the innocent humans while worrying about _our _human and Scott. Swell way to start the day, maybe Allison should bring a tranquilizer of some sort, at least that way I'd be asleep and not plowing people over. _"Uh…" But of course he hadn't noticed her, and much so as she hadn't noticed him; her eyes had probably been on her schedule attempting to find the locker number and combination that had been assigned to her by the principal like any new person would. Five… six… too many seconds passed with Isaac simply staring at the girl with a shell shocked expression before he gathered his bearings and hesitantly offered a hand down towards the newcomer girl. "Sorry." He frowned, "I mean…" He watched her as she moved on the floor attempting to gather all her things in a pile and placed her shades on the collar of her shirt. "I didn't… see you?" Isaac continued. "You alright?"

For a beat or two Isaac actually thought the girl would ignore his hand entirely, get up on her own and make that her first impression of the day; but when did thinking every really go well for him? Like most times he was proved something, the girl proved him wrong by looking up at him with shockingly blue eyes, once all her things had been gathered, and lifting a hand to meet his to allow him to help her up. A somewhat friendly smile adorned her lips for a few moments, until she stood straight on her own two feet and pulled her hand away from his grasp so she could attempt dusting off the black material of her band tee. "Oh, yeah, I'm bloody wonderful." She admitted in a deeply sardonic tone, her words bleeding with a deep accent that, with his half cultured mind, Isaac could only label as British. "Getting bumped into on my first day of class is the best way to start, innit?" It was very clear that she was not attempting to hold back the tone of sarcasm for the taller boy's benefit.

Isaac's hands retracted and stuffed themselves into his pockets no more than a few seconds after the girl had pulled away. A simple duck of his head and an uttered apology would have sufficed for him; enough to get on his merry little way and call it a day; but the girl and her thick accent seemed to have other plans. First, his brows pinched together, and then they ascended on their own like they themselves couldn't make up their mind. He wasn't sure if he was more taken aback by how clearly the girl wasn't from around Beacon Hills (or anywhere near the U.S, really), or if he was more taken aback by the level of grudging sarcasm that slipped into her voice without fail. "Well, you traveled a long way." He said in an almost equally sardonic note, "What better way to say welcome to America than by being plowed over by an American." Ending his brief taunt with a barely-there grin, Isaac tossed a look over the girl's shoulder, noticing his class was just a few feet and a hallway turn away.

"What a great welcome. I'm so thankful." Once again, her words bled with a tone of sarcasm that made the taller boy look in her direction again; he watched as she attempted to hug her messed up papers against her chest; this time her words came adorned with a smile that illuminated her features enough to make Isaac think that he was off the hook and she forgave him for the stunt that was bound to leave a bruise on her pale skin. _Ha! _"I reckon it's not easy to pretend you're not foreign when you've got a bunch of people round you speakin' in a funny accent and having _them _think you're the one with the funny accent, yeah?"

"Right." Isaac allowed with a shake of his head and the smallest of smiles playing at his lips. "Isn't there a saying somewhere that the majority rules or something?" He wondered, not at all surprised to see her brows rising in what he hoped to be shock of some sort. Maybe he'd pissed her off enough already and she'd just saunter off and he would be in the clear to make himself like a fly on the wall for the day. But by _that _wicked look in her shocking blue orbs Isaac had no choice but to assume she'd already come up with some retort to his words, thus the reason he ideally lowered his eyes in the direction of the phone he'd just retrieved from his pocket before looking over the girl's shoulder once again. "M'sorry, really. Just…" He said without truly looking at her, and speaking before she even could. "…Welcome to BH, I guess." He _was _sorry, and he _did _try to put that through with the sincerity in his voice, hopefully enough that the girl or bystanders could pick up on it easily.

A soft shake of her head, that was enough to make the waist length ends of her wavy black hair dance, was the thing that had Isaac's eyes fall on her frame again and watch as she attempted to look past his shoulder in what he guessed to be a mirror of what he had been doing. Emphasis on the attempt, since the boy clearly had a head and a couple of inches of shoulder over her. He tried not to smile at the look that crossed her features. "Thanks for your _very _focused concern," she simply stated, "but as I mentioned earlier, it's my first day of class, and I don't want to be late to my first one." She nodded. "So, if you don't mind…"

One of these days Isaac would have to get Scott to teach him how to not come off as rude; everyone seemed to find him adorable, so he truly needed to learn or he was going to end up like Peter. _No, thanks. _It didn't _really _surprise him that the girl seemed to have a remark ready to roll of her tongue without hesitation regardless of her failed attempts of the blatant mimicked action of looking over his shoulder; she did strike him as the type to just have something to say for anything; but he'd come out as rude. He truly hadn't been trying to be, not really, it just sort of happened in awkward situations such as the one he seemed to be stuck in, where he wanted to pat the person, the girl in this case, on the head, and tell them just how important they were to the world in order to make up for his lackluster skills in socializing. He wasn't sure why being dodgy made up for that, but it seemed to do.

He puffed his cheeks out and exhaled slowly at the mention of his _focus _being tossed into the air, took a step to the side, and swept an arm out in front of him toward the empty space beside him. A simple motion to say 'on your way.' _Super. _He thought. _Great first impression. Why am I allowed in public without supervision? _"Try not to get run over again on your way." He told her. "If you've got Coach, don't talk about his shorts, he'll make a shpeel about how convenient they are.

There were a couple of silent seconds in which he didn't know what to expect; maybe another witty retort, or maybe even a slap across the face, but once those seconds passed he was surprised to see the smile across her lips shift in amusement and her brows lifted; an expression that spoke in a clear _you did _not _just do that_ toward the blue eyed boy; something to which he only smiled in a very _oh, yes I did, _manner. Was that the scent of short admiration Isaac caught in the girl for a couple of moments? He wasn't sure, but it wasn't long until a huff, more of a scoffed breath really, left the girl's lips as her hands hugged her papers tighter against her chest and her head shook.

His hands lowered, and he truly thought she was just going to walk away, but the few steps she'd taken stopped right at his side; he could already feel the snark escaping from her lips before it actually did. "Thanks for the advice." She nodded. "I'll keep it in mind, I hope everyone is as friendly as you are, tall guy." She paused. "Try not to kill anyone on your way to class, yeah?" The amusement in her smile never wavered; it actually shifted into a smirk that was as much victorious as it was sarcastic and pretentiously innocent; such a treat that made the boy's brows raise in almost a mirror of the motion she had done only moments prior. And then the girl's head shook once again and she walked away; Isaac didn't miss the manner in which her fingers quickly attempted to search for the map of the school the principal had surely given her.

If it had been any other day, Isaac might have actually tried to find out more about the girl, because she was, in three words, very fucking attractive; he might even have told Scott about her, asked what he should do, _if _he should do anything at all. Maybe he'd even asked Allison to ask her father to give him any pointers on British people, maybe even approached Lydia with the question.

But it wasn't any other day in Beacon Hills, and the horrors that made the pack nervous remained unknown. Stiles remained in the hospital, Danny was still dead.

And in that mournful day, to Isaac Lahey, it all felt like it was just the beginning; and the first impression he could or couldn't have on a new student was the very least of his worries.

**To Be Continued.**


	7. Chapter 7: Don't Diss the Jeep, Scott

Everything had been black; completely and endlessly black, and suddenly Stiles became aware of noises, even if they were barely any. Steps from plastic soles against linoleum floor, the creaking of doors opening and closing, a couple of whispers here and there; but the most prominent sound had been that of the whoosh of blades cutting the air from the air conditioning or heating on the ceiling above him. He couldn't remember where he was; how he'd gotten there, what _day _it was… but he knew he was awake; or at least he thought he was; it wasn't as if he hadn't thought he'd been awake when he was in a dream before, but he thought that time was different. His head felt light, clear and unburdened, his breathing came unjaded, soft intakes and exhales of bunches of clean air that brought full life into his body, and, for the first time in what felt like forever, Stiles felt as if every limb of his body had rested better than ever.

Movement; he could move. He did so slowly and stopped when a fire-like stinging overpowered his forearm. And then, as if the pain had brought forth everything he'd momentarily forgotten, his peaceful bubble of calmness burst as his eyes shot open to make sure he hadn't somehow pulled on the stitches on his arm. He remembered it all; the inability to sleep, the nightmares, the black smoke that had followed him around… the accident.

Suddenly moving felt like a bad idea. A small red spot shone bright on the bandages on his arm, and he let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. It wasn't too bad, the pain, so everything was probably okay; but as his body became more and more aware of his surroundings and his own pain, he realized there was a spot at the top of his forehead where he could feel light stinging too. It truly was as if with each spot of pain his body started feeling he could remember more and more details of what had happened. His Jeep, it was resting on its side at some part of the road, and he'd ran to the hospital with adrenaline running through his veins serving as the best natural sort of morphine all throughout his body. And until he'd risen his undbandaged arm to feel the spot at the top of his forehead where he'd felt a stinging pain, he hadn't realised just how damaged he'd come out. Nothing broken; obviously, or the pain wouldn't be so... dull, but a couple of scratches here and there. The worst of which was his arm; that Melissa McCall had wonderfully stitched and bandaged. He felt tired, suddenly; tired but thankful to have come out of an accident like the one he'd been in with nothing but scratches. And though he felt rested, a part of him continued to feel tired. Like there was this nagging part of his brain that continued to call him stupid for having woken up from the sedative induced sleep, because slumber that peaceful clearly could only come from there. That as soon as he was able to leave the hospital and sleep in his own room the nightmares would return, or even worse, the smoke. He closed his eyes, whishing, as if it worked that way, that he could go back to the peaceful sleep he'd just come out of; if only for an hour or two more. Nerves were also part of the feelings that had decided to take over him when he realised he couldn't fall asleep again; would the dreaded smoke come haunt him while he was alone in a room? Did the black smoke exist _at all_?!

Of course, moments later his father came in with a worried face and a doctor following behind him. It had taken most of the night to talk to the doctor, and a little bit more to talk to his dad into relaxation enough for the Sheriff to leave for work and leave his son in the care of the doctors and nurses of Beacon Hills Memorial. After that Stiles didn't dare move in fear that one of the many scratches on his body would start hurting again. He never liked pain, but now less than ever. It only added to the mountain of things he had to worry about pretty much _daily_. Regardless of his no movement policy, his head flicked quickly in the door's direction that afternoon the moment a soft knock echoed toward his ears from the door; halfway scared that it was the smoke coming to haunt him, or any other monster getting ready to split his soul in half, if that was even possible.

But no, his tired watery eyes moved from their blank stare on the ceiling to the door that suddenly opened. Blinking repeatedly the moment Melissa McCall appeared through the door, Stiles managed a very tired smile. "You have a visitor." She told him with a grin, patting the door's wood twice before stepping back and opening the door completely.

The idea of a visitor made the amber eyed boy attempt to sit a little straighter; of course, he was an idiot. Forgetting completely about the stitches on his arm and propping himself up on the bed with said arm had been his worst idea yet. He didn't even last one second leaning on that arm; instead, he pressed all his weight on the other, and sat as straight as possible, placing his suddenly pulsating arm across his stomach. When his eyes rose again toward the door they fell on his best friend, Scott McCall, and a smile as tired as any kind of smile he managed as of late, lifted the corners of his lips. "Hey, Scott." He greeted, and was only able to yell a "THANK YOU, MRS. MCCALL!" in the nurse's direction before the door clicked shut.

"You look awful." Scott announced, walking into the room, and not even thinking twice about stepping closer to his friend's bed with worry illuminating his every cell.

The most quiet of laughs left Stiles' lips the moment such candour left from his best friend regarding his appearance, and that laughter turned into a short wince the moment muscles only used for laughter moved his cheeks in a place where there was a little, yet still annoying scratch. And that was all it took for Scott to quickly allow his own hand to fall on his bandaged arm's digits; not even seconds later, flow-like black veins started appearing from the wolf's fingers up toward his forearm. And Stiles tried, he _honestly _tried not to sigh with relief the moment the pain started dissipating with Scott's hold; it felt as if some sort of morphine worked itself through his body in no more than two seconds, or as if the wounds he'd had weren't even there in the first place. "So _that's _what that feels like." He said, making Scott smile regardless of the short agony he suffered for his friend. "I always wondered." Stiles admitted as he sat straight and tired on the bed, letting out a thankful scoffed breath with a smile across relieved lips.

But then Stiles' eyes lifted to meet his best friend's, and worry instantly crossed his features due to the manner in which Scott grimaced, and he couldn't help but attempt, in some discrete manner, to pry his arm away from his best friend's hand so he didn't have to feel such a pain anymore. Discrete, because he decided to speak in order for the alpha to not concentrate too much on his movements. "Guess I finally look how I feel, huh?"

Of course, Scott caught up. "Stop." He said, shaking his head and holding onto Stiles' hand for a while longer. "What happened?" He asked, making Stiles sigh and plop his head against the pillows once again while his brain worked in overload to attempt to come up with a believable explanation.

"Uh, I..." A very short scoffed breath left his lips as his head shook from side to side against the cushioned pillow and his eyes fell from Scott to his bandaged arm. "I had an accident on my way to school yesterday." Clearly half the truth would suffice. Of course, almost instantly Scott's face twisted with worry once again. "Don't worry, my Jeep had the most damage." Stiles comforted. "All I got was this." He informed while lifting the undamaged arm and motioned to his scratched up face as if he were a painting instead of a human being.

The truth was that Scott had been worried from the moment Stiles hadn't made it to school the previous day, but his mum had told him that going to see him at all in the hospital would be for nought, since his friend was asleep. So he'd waited, having to endure the eminent worry of him and his friends, until the moment he could come and see that Stiles was okay for himself. "Maybe you need to get a new car." Scott said with a shake of his head, pulling himself out of his worried reverie and taking a seat on an empty space of the bed by Stiles' hips.

That was all it took for a breathed scoff to escape Stiles' lips. Enough to almost make the boy become able to ignore the sudden little headache that beat against his brain. His undamaged hand lifted to run gently against his forehead as if that touch alone would make the discomfort dissipate. "Be nice, Scott." He snarked. "It's not the Jeep's fault that its owner is a complete klutz." Suddenly, though, as his eyes travelled around the room in a feigned roll of annoyance, he realised that it was near midday when his eyes fell on the clock. He had actually fallen asleep without realising it and had slept almost half a day? "Wait..." That wasn't the only thing that had bothered him. "Scott, what are you doing here? Is everything okay out there?" _Aren't you supposed to be at school? _He completed in his mind, studying his friend with curious and equally concerned orbs.

"Everything's fine." Scott replied, shaking his head. "Apart from Danny's death, as you know." He paused, sorrow crossing his hues in a whim for a moment at the memory of their deceased friend. "I just came to make sure you were okay—Stiles, stop!" Scott said with a commanding tone and a half amused smile because his friend had once again attempted to pry his hand away from his hold.

"Scott, please." Stiles started, for every single attempt at trying to make his best friend stop suffering for him were easily pushed away by Scott; everytime he tried to escape his grasp, the alpha's obviously stronger hand held onto Stiles' arm to a point where he had only two options, one of which was to give up and let the boy suffer for him, regardless of the clear relief that his help brought him, and the other... "I'm fine, okay? No bones broken, just scratches; just this." His free hand motioned hurriedly at the arm Scott held and his face, all in a giant only slightly frustrated circular motion. "I'm _so _okay that I was actually even able to walk here from the car crash." He lied, hoping for his sake that Melissa had actually kept his secret. Because for some reason he couldn't exactly put his finger on, Stiles had decided that Scott would never find out about his black smoke adventures. _More like nightmares. _He couldn't know about those either, since most of them involved said black smoke.

But of course Scott's lips emitted a disbelieving hum as his head shook a couple of times. "What did the doctor say?" He could smell the fear off of his friend, and it worried him more than anything.

It was a look Stiles did not miss; a look that made him sigh and his head to shake for a moment as his free hand plopped against the mattress. "He thinks I'm lucky I came out almost unharmed." He admitted, remembering the talk he had had with his father and the doctor the night prior. "I'm scheduled for an MRI later today." He paused, finally looking in Scott's direction again. "But your mom told me I could go home tomorrow morning. She said I'm only here for observation."

To this, Scott nodded. "Is your dad coming to pick you up?" He wondered, forbidding himself from letting go of his friend's hand even as he manoeuvred to climb on the bed Stiles rested on prior to getting under the covers, much like they had done many times before when they were kids.

And it truly was as if suddenly Stiles was thrown back in time to one of the many times he and Scott had spent together hiding in blanket forts, or even under his bed when they were kids and things got too scary in real life. He couldn't really fight back the smile that broke at his lips, even though he did try as he moved over enough for him _or _Scott to fall off of the bed even though it was rather narrow for two people; this time being smart enough to use the unwounded hand to propel himself. "No," he shook his head. "They're being really hard on him in the station. I think he's got some sort of supervisor over there, and whomever it is won't let him leave."

"I can pick you up." Scott quickly said, looking at his friend with concerned eyes.

Stiles nodded once and lifted a shoulder in a shrug. "I was going to take a taxi, since my Jeep's all but wrecked, but that works." And attempting to be discrete once again, Stiles tried tugging his hand away from Scott's hold once the grimace on his face became permanent.

"Alright." He nodded. "I'll come pick you up tomorrow, and we can go for ice cream." But just as soon as the offer ended, a sudden look of slight frustration crossed his features. "Stop trying to move your hand away, goddamn it!" He said, nudging Stiles' hand slightly and only resulting on a chuckle from the injured boy and a shake of his head. But then the boy somehow managed to push himself to the side in order to not crush his friend's arm under him. It felt nice to be able to feel something familiar, something that brought him an actual sense of safety the way he had been lacking for the past countless nights due to that horrid cloud of terror hanging over his head binto his unconsciousness. It was only a few moments later, after a comfortable silence between both friends, that Scott spoke again. "You look tired." He stated. "Maybe you should try to sleep."

Instantly, Stiles shook his head. "I've already slept, I'm not tired." Only the first part was the truth.

And Scott caught right up. "Stiles." He said in a somewhat warning tone.

"No, seriously." Stiles' brows shot up. "I slept almost a day, I'm _so _completely wide awake, I don't need—"

"Stiles!" Scott said, forcing the red of his alpha hues to shine brightly for his friend's benefit even if a smile remained across his lips. "Sleep, okay?" He encouraged. "We can talk tomorrow. There's some stuff I want to tell you, but first you need to rest up."

One look in Scott's deadly reds of horror, and wolf or not, Stiles had no say in what he could do. Not because he felt compelled to do it the way Isaac had once described it to him in a curious conversation, but because he truly didn't want to make Scott, a) angry, or b) turn to some other tactic of convincing. So, instead, mainly to avoid going into the details of how thankful he was for Scott's help, for he was sure his friend could read that in his eyes anyway, Stiles replied to his last words. "Fine." He nodded. "I'll sleep, but you better have planned some French fries in that whole ice cream deal, 'cause the food here sucks." He joked; but he knew that Scott was right. They had to talk. And just like the doctor and his best friend had told him, he had to rest, whether he wanted to or not.

Because he knew he would need all of his energy if he was going to find out what his haunting black smoke meant all on his own.

**To Be Continued.**


	8. Chapter 8: New Girl

First period, once he had actually gotten there that is, dragged on in a slow and steady pace for Isaac Lahey, providing the perfect hideaway for his thoughts to wander off on their own; wandering off to make the structure of a spider web inside of his head. One stemming vine of the web was prioritized around Scott and where he was, what he was doing, if Stiles was okay or not. Another string sought out to think about Allison; wondering if she'd managed to make it to school that day as well. He _had _seen Lydia Martin in the hallway post collision with the new girl, and on every whim Isaac hoped Allison was there as well. _Where Lydia is, Allison is, right? Don't girls travel in groups like that? _

There was a distinct branch of the web focused on the words spilling from his teacher's mouth, preparing him to have an answer ready on the off chance that she called on him; unlikely, but not impossible. Lastly, he had a small vine of the web dedicated to the very collision he'd suffered that very morning. It had been horrendously obvious that the girl was new, and he idly wondered if he had been her first interaction at Beacon Hills High; if such were the case, then he genuinely believed that sucked for her.

The thoughts had carried him away into a hazy mindset; lost in a world of swimming thoughts, and it wasn't until the obnoxious ringing of the transition bell that he dwindled back down to reality. He was the first out of the classroom with the prying thought that he would be skipping second period. Romeo and Juliet was the most cliché romance Shakespeare had ever written, in his humble opinion, and he had read it plenty of times prior, enough to skip the heavy introduction from his overzealous teacher. Once the hallways emptied, though, Isaac was reminded that the school would call his guardian, Melissa McCall, if he was marked present for one class and absent the next; and wasn't the whole point of him being present that day _not _worrying Melissa? Well, with that thought in his mind, Isaac turned away from his prior stride for the rarely used library, and meandered right back down the hall for literature.

He didn't walk into the classroom until _after _the tardy bell had rung; what he had wanted to do was make straight path toward his empty set of desks completely unnoticed, and blend himself in for the period as well, but luck wasn't on his side... as usual. "Ah, Mr. Lahey!" Came the voice of the Literature teacher once he'd taken a few steps toward his seat. "Nice of you to finally join us."

With a spin on his heel, and a tick of his lips, Isaac popped his mouth open to utter and apology, which was useless for two reasons. The first being that the curly haired brunette he had collided against that morning was standing near the teacher's desk, hugging her books to her like she'd done earlier; the second being that the teacher beat him at finding words. "Since you seem to like roaming the halls so much, why don't you show Miss O'Brien around the school?" He said. "Do something useful with your reading period besides sleeping, huh?"

"I... uh—" He'd started, he was about to argue, say he was planning on practicing lacrosse or something like that, but the quirk of the teacher's brow made him second guess himself; so did his words.

"Why don't you start by showing her to her seat?" It was with a puff of his cheeks and a sigh that he nodded and finally allowed himself to look in the girl's direction; it wasn't a long glance, though it was still enough to see a small embarrassed grin crossing her features, he simply motioned with his head to the back of the classroom and went on his merry way in that direction without waiting to see if she was following. Mainly because the whole class was staring at _him, _and he didn't like it. "Welcome to Beacon Hills, Miss O'Brien." The teacher said, and Isaac had to fight the urge to roll his eyes at his feigned welcoming voice. _Yeah, welcome to the school that has a higher rate of deaths than grade levels. _Isaac thought, manoeuvring to the linked seats and dropping himself into one.

The girl's head bobbed in a nod to his welcome and turned around away from him, hugging her books tighter against her chest before walking quite confidently toward the seat Isaac had taken; though it became _very _evident to the boy that she was as excited of having to be assigned a guide as much as he was to _be _the guide she had been assigned to as she set her books on the shared desk before settling on the empty seat by his side. "Great to see you too, tall guy." She said in that distinctive accent of hers, looking in his direction for a second with a small amused smile crossing her lips before looking toward her books.

_Tall guy. _It'd slipped his mind earlier when the girl spun that nickname his way, but in the cold of the collision, and then taking evasive action, Isaac had completely forgotten to even mention his name to her, who was just 'that new girl' to him. Being social wasn't exactly an old thing for him; socializing and talking with people, making friends. Nope, that's what his pack was for; _they_ were his friends.

Still, the girl had been plowed down by him, the least he could do was tell her his name and hope for the same in return. Otherwise, whatever apology he could utter out would wind up sounding half assed and lacking of any care. "Isaac." He said, crossing his arms atop the desk and chancing a glance in her curly tressed self. "Or, 'ay, Lahey,' works just fine." The words were uttered in hushed tones, eyes focussed forward as if solely by looking at the teacher it would make it impossible for him to see that he was talking over her lecturing introduction for Romeo and Juliet. "And you, new girl?"

He was surprised to see a motion at the corner of his eye, making his eyes move away from the lecture, toward the brunette. She was smiling, any sign of amusement drained from her features, she was trying to be _friendly, _and her hand had raised in his direction. "Brittany." She said. "Or Brit, or Melody, or Mel; whichever you like best, I don't mind."

With his brow quirked, Isaac kept his focus away from the teacher and attempted to push his thoughts of Danny, Stiles, and Scott to the back of his mind; instead, he chose to focus on the two opposing names the girl had given him. Maybe she was a theatre lover and chose to go by a penname; _or is that authors? _Or... maybe her full name was Brittany Melody O'Brien. Narrowed hues challenged an inquiry at the choices before a deft hand grassed hers in a minor shake. "Well, _Brittany_," He nodded, "for lack of care earlier... sorry for steam rolling you over in the hallway." He let go of her hand. "Nice to see you made it out without injury." A subtle nod of his head accompanied his words before he rested his chin atop the cross of his arms, eyes honing in on the dents at random and faded doodles decorating the desk.

Her hands stretched on the desk, eyes looking in the direction of the teacher the same as his. And he thought that was it, that her attention was on the teacher, but a whispered scoffed breath left her lips seconds after his words, and in a tone much like his, she whispered a response. "You say that now, but I've got this pain at the lower part of my back that I _think _might bruise." The words left her easily and without thinking, not at all surprising the blue eyed boy at all.

"I hear ice solves that problem." He stated, sitting up slowly shortly after. "So does keeping your eyes unglued from a sheet of paper." Though his eyes continued to focus forward, the faintest of grins ticked just at the very corner of his lips. Whether Brittany was being earnest or not was beyond him; though he could only detect sarcasm from the brunette sitting next to him. It was with a prolonged sigh that he dipped his hand into the backpack that rested on the flood amidst their feet, lazy fingers fetching out the first notebook they could rest on. Slides illuminating the blackboard signified that the class would be taking notes; taking some participation grade for writing down useless facts that no one would ever revisit. "Got a notebook, or do you need paper?" He asked her, eyes flicking in her direction. He didn't have to enjoy the task of toting the girl around the school for an entire forty minutes, but it wouldn't kill him to push other thoughts aside long enough to show her some kindness that she clearly deserved on her first day in Beacon Hills High; especially after the incident earlier that may or may not have bruised her.

A rather diverted smile crossed her lips as her head shook, eyes falling to the desk under her hand and the ends of her curls dancing along with her negative motion, making Isaac's brow lift as he watched her reach inside her shoulder bag for an equally themed notebook –the outline of a white gas mask in the middle of a black cover and the words _My Chemical Romance_ adorning one of its sides–, and set it on the table. "I've got notepads."

Isaac's shoulder lifted in a shrug, turning away from her and allowing his eyes to look past her notebook toward his own. Some part of him wondered what the girl had with the band name that seemed to cross every piece of seemingly everything she owned, the rest reminded him that being obsessed with something wasn't a strange feat; in fact, it was found in six out of ten people in high school. "And, by the way." The girl said in another whispered note, pulling Isaac away from his mental statistics. "I do believe there's a rule that you're not supposed to run in the hallways, yeah?" His eyes fell on her, brows raised. "Or maybe you rushed reading through those too."

He watched her open her notebook to a clear new page, and he didn't miss the neat title that adorned the cover to announce that it was the notebook assigned to Literature. He had to fight the urge to scoff as he looked down to his own notebook; it lacked organization in every sense of the word. Pages were crinkled, some doodled on, the subjects varied; math on one page, and science on the page opposite of it, Literature and Music Appreciation just pages after that, some notes on Film and Fiction, and then scribbles from College prep; nothing but lack luster skills in cleanliness, which compared to the girl's notebook seemed to be an outright mess. "Rules are made to be broken, don't you know?" He tapped his pen on the blank page he had opened in his notebook, turning away from her the moment the lights dimmed to illuminate the glow of the projector pointed at the blackboard.

Even in the dark, it was easy for the wolf to make out every detail of everyone around him; including the girl at his side, who chanced a look at him and a roll of her eyes in feigned annoyance; feigned only for the amused smirk that adorned her lips even as her head shook and her hand moved swiftly in wording motions to easily copy what shone upon the blackboard. It made Isaac look away with a partly victorious grin of his own, doodling over his sheet of paper as if he were taking notes, when really, he was drawing a skateboarding chicken. It wasn't until he'd turned away that she decided to speak. "Maybe so, but last time I checked, bones are not."

The boy dully noted that he would have to have the notes the girl so eagerly wrote at some point the next day in order to have his participation grade, but the girl's words completely interrupted whatever thought he'd been having over asking Allison for her own notes later on the day, and made him earnestly unable to do anything but crook a minute smirk at Brittany's retort. _Witty, aren't you? _It had almost become a personal challenge to beat her at her own verbal game. "Since when did a bruise equal a broken bone?" He wondered, shaking his head and adding a second image to his doodle, making it into a small comic. "I think it's best if you don't take Anatomy."

Even that simple word had thoughts of Danny pressing to become forefront in his mind regardless of how hard he'd tried to suppress it; Danny'd taken that class, Isaac could remember him asking one of his Lacrosse team mates for the assignment one day. Lacrosse may just be a sport, but the team was almost like a little family, and Danny was gone; it did make Isaac sad regardless of how little he spoke to him compared to most of the other guys. The sorrow of the school radiated through everyone, unignorable, ever-present, and every time Isaac allowed his mind to slip into such a void he could feel the sorrow beat into his own brain and heart himself.

It was exactly why such thoughts had to be pushed back and away until he could talk to Allison or Scott, because there were some things that simply didn't add up, and if the conversation he had had with Scott the previous afternoon had led to anything, it was the belief that Danny had not, in fact, died of his own accord. "Why, are you taking that class?" The girl's voice shook him away from his reverie; a thought pond so deep that he hadn't even noticed the girl's quietness until she had spoken once again. Silence had been his companion, and he realised that his hands had delved into tracing over the little blue lines that lay across each smooth sheet of paper in every single spiralled notebook in the world.

He'd been lost inside his own mind, and he figured Brittany had simply been occupied with the notes illuminated in front of the class; not that he even thought much about her with all the mind strings webbing inside his brain already. He knew most new students, and studious ones like his friend, Lydia, would be as set on copying every note the way the new girl seemed to be, but the silence had been slightly too long. It made his brows pinch together and his eyes shift in order to look in her direction with a seemingly confused expression that wasn't at all feigned due to the question she voiced in his direction. "Nah, Chemistry is my preferred lab." He replied, noticing the lack of snark in his own voice and feeling somewhat self conscious when the girl's surprisingly blue hues looked away from her notes and in his direction, lowering to his notebook and then lowering toward her own notes while a soft shake of her head displayed her disapproval over his lack of note taking. The motion made Isaac's brows raise and a sigh escape his lips. "Anatomy is for the real smart people." he informed her while pushing his notebook aside to flip it shut in order to pry it away from her disapproving orbs. "Like the ones who want to become doctors and such." Gentle hues flitted towards the clock that hung on the wall, watching the second hand tick by.

_Did an hour really go by that fast?_ Isaac wondered; the bell was two minutes, maybe one, from ringing, and he deemed that close enough to slip his supplies right back into his bag, slender digits tapping an impatient rhythm on the table and unable to miss the girl's suddenly accomplished look when she set her pen down with a little grin crossing her lips; he looked down toward her notebook. Not only was it incredibly neat, handwriting curvy and fancy in ways he would only remember seeing in movies of stories dated in the fifteen hundred's, but it seemed complete; clearly she had actually finished writing everything that had been displayed on the blackboard, assignment included. "I decided to take biology." She announced, clearly willing to continue the conversation they'd invested themselves in and making Isaac's head shake slowly. "It's not the same as Anatomy, is it?" She asked, moving swiftly in order to place all her things away into that black shoulder bag of hers.

"No, Biology is cells and mitosis." He stated. "Anatomy is... well, muscles, skin, organs, bones... the extremities." That's when the bell rang; it was as if its ringing had been the go to a bull race, everyone around them started moving as if someone were holding a gun to their head and would shoot if they didn't get out of the classroom in the next ten seconds. He stood up, though, watching the girl look curiously around her with an amused grin on her lips; it was that glance in her direction that had Isaac remember he wouldn't be attending reading period that day, for he'd nearly started making his way for the door. He had to show the new girl around.

_Great. _The straps to his bag made smooth movements in the way they were flung over his shoulders, and slender digits wrapped around them, basing at the bottom just as a hand placement. Weight rocked back onto his heels as he turned in the girl's direction, patiently waiting for her to move; a few moments later, once all her things were neatly placed inside her bag, she held the two books she seemed to be happy to carry around with her all day against her chest, and nodded in Isaac's direction prior to moving along toward the exit.

The boy discovered the use of the two books when, a few beats later, he stood with the girl outside their classroom, debating hues ghosting left and right as he pondered which direction he could lead the girl in first. "Let me see your schedule." On cue, he held a hand out for the paper he required. It didn't take long for a surprised expression to raise her brows upward even though she opened one of the two books to take out the paper.

"Please?" She said, closing the book and offering the paper to him. From the other book she pulled the school's map. "Did no one teach you the two magic words when you were a child?"

Pressing his lips together with a slow exhale through his nose, Isaac faced the girl with a feigned look of innocence written across his features. "May I _please _see your schedule so I can, y'know, show you were your classes will be?" Again, he lifted his palm up and graciously took the paper she offered him. The map was there as well, but he disregarded it. Odds were that the classrooms weren't up to date, and he could map Brittany through the school probably easier than any map could.

He watched her place the map back in the first page of the two books she held and then watched her manoeuvre in order to place the two books inside her bag. Had she really just had those books out so she didn't have to fold her schedule and map?

Clearly showing the new girl around would be an interesting task.

**To Be Continued.**


	9. Chapter 9: The Tour

"Alright, so… left first." Isaac nodded shortly looking behind him for a few seconds in the direction he had decided to go. "I can show you the necessities, like the bathroom, the cafeteria, library, teacherless hallway…" His feet were already shuffling over the floor, carrying the boy down the left corridor as he spoke; deciding to ignore the victorious grin that took over the new girl's lips and feeling almost accomplished when he heard her slightly quickening steps to catch up to his long legs.

He was aware of her movements when she walked by his side; how she was fixing her leather jacket, how her black heeled boots clicked against the ground as she attempted walking swiftly and somehow able to do so gracefully as well. "Teacherless hallway?" She suddenly wondered, eyes narrowing shortly as her head tilted in his direction. "Why don't you pretend I'm new and have no idea of what you're talking about?" She requested. "Oh, wait." Her head ticked back shortly before her bright blue eyes lifted in his direction. "I _am _new and have no bloody idea what the hell you're on about."

Still walking, still leading the way past windows and billboards, Isaac turned sharp eyes on Brittany. "Are you just _new _or have you never been to school before?" He wondered quite rudely, brow furrowing. "That's where all the students hide out," he informed her, "stow away, you know? With no… no supervision?" With brows pinched questionably, the boy came to a stop at two doorways, one with a pink triangle, one with a blue triangle. Flitting eyes went from the girl at his side, to the doors, and back, lifting an arm to motion at the doors. "The better bathrooms."

He watched her eyes widen as his hand reached up to scratch over the back of his neck. _Struggling to make small talk here. _He thought, shortly annoyed with the new girl as he cleared his throat. She cleared her own, and if Isaac didn't know better he'd say she looked like she'd been caught doing something bad for a flicker so short he thought he might have imagined it. Her eyes fell to the doors he presented her with before looking around again; she took a long pause as she looked at her surroundings, maybe studying them, but Isaac could smell worry in her; her heart had sped up shortly, and then she actually spoke. "I—I was home schooled before I came here." She finally looked in his direction, hands wrapping around the strap of her bag a little too tightly, heart shortly slowing to the beat he'd heard before. Was she lying?

"Home-schooled, huh?" He wondered, though it was the perfect window to make small talk. Sure, he had never been _home schooled, _but he had been held back from going to school plenty of times before until viewable marks faded from his features, or his father was stable. The thought alone made Isaac's nose crinkle up in slight discomfort at the memory; eased by the knowledge that he was safe. "Alright, then, new girl." He said, feeling the discomfort dissipate as quickly as it had come, and finding his mind wrapped in the wonderings over the girl's lies moments prior. He still wasn't too good when it came to his werewolf senses, but he _had _learnt the tells of someone who was lying from Derek Hale; tells that had presented in the girl by his side seconds prior, and—

"Yeah…" She said, her whole demeanour suddenly changing as if a switch had been flicked; some sort of sadness radiating from her being, such an emotion that did not at all match with the smile that crossed her full lips, confusing Isaac completely. And for a brief while, the only sounds filling the now empty halls between Brittany and Isaac were the echoes of their feet thudding against the tiled floor of the hallways, his sneakers occasionally causing a squeak here and there. _If this is the end of our conversation skills we're in for one boring tour. _He thought, listing all the classes he'd read in her schedule off in his head as if it were to make a mental map automatically.

He had to admit, at least to himself; he was wary of the girl. And just when he started to think about all the silence ahead of them, debating on whether he was going to be able to push back thoughts of the pack completely out of his head, Brittany spoke up. "It was boring..." She started, making his eyes lift in her direction with intent curiosity. "...my only friend was my mum, so I begged her to let me come to school once we moved here."

"So this is really your first time in school, then?" He wondered, eyes leaving her frame in order to look in the direction he was walking; a couple of more steps and they'd be in the hallway he had mentioned earlier.

He watched her nod, lips twisting to the side shortly as her eyes lifted in his direction. "Basically, yes." She shrugged. "This is my first school."

"Scared at all?" He inquired; not fitting in, sticking out like a sore thumb, people staring, all things Isaac could sympathize with; so, focusing on _that, _he hoped he could at least make the girl's transition a little easier.

"No, I'm not—" She frowned, hands raising away from the strap of her bag until they rested crossed under her chest. "I'm not really scared." She paused, looking right at him. "More like..." He watched her struggle for words, searching for the one that related the most to what she attempted to convey. "...I'm nervous I'll fuck something up and make it proper obvious I've not studied among others in a very long time."

_In a very long time? _Isaac wondered; so had she been to school or not? He didn't want to look like that complete weirdo that picked out three words when he'd been given more than one sentence to focus on, so instead he nodded, frowning shortly and stopped right in front of the beginning of a hallway and motioned toward it with a hand. "Teacherless hallway." He announced. There were a couple of people there, sitting against the walls, in front of their lockers, or talking amongst themselves with the sort of misplaced glee and sorrow that could be the only emotion to reign the school days after the death of a fellow student.

"Huh." She breathed, her hands falling at her sides as her brows rose shortly. "By the way you made it sound I actually expected a vandalized hallway of some sort." She smiled, bringing that sardonic tone Isaac had recognised from the moment they'd met back into a shinning front across her features.

"Your next three classes are in a row down the next hallway." He admitted, head shaking over her retort and clearing his throat for a moment. "Shall we?" Blue hues skated down the hallway, ghosting over the few lingering bodies before landing on the girl at his side; who nodded shortly after and motioned with her head to the side, making Isaac nod in return and his whole frame to shift in order to resume the tour. "And, for the record," He looked back at her even as they walked, "we're teenagers, not wild animals." He joked, unable to stop the smirk that etched on his features at his own ploy of words.

A short and rather quiet scoffed breath left Brittany's lips in a quick motion as her hands tightened around the strap of her bag. "Say that to the herd of bulls that left the classroom as if something had pinched them in the arse." She joked, making the boy almost instantly snort and shake his head.

He thought back to the class he'd had with her, thought about the way the class had gotten up, packed their things and left at the dismissal bell. "That was just students being students." He admitted, breathing out a short laugh as they walked along. "Man," His hand lifted to scratch at the back of his neck. "I feel like I need to wrap you in bubble wrap to keep you safe in the halls or something." He nodded. "Swaddle you in scarves, I don't know, but you've got some getting used to."

When his eyes returned to the front he realised they'd almost walked past the main hallway; making his whole frame shift swiftly with the agility only his werewolf senses could bring upon, and linked his arm through hers, just as her hands tightened against the strap of her bag, and pulled her in a turn toward the main hallway; not at all missing the fact that her eyes widened shortly after the contact, and her throat cleared. It was such a sound that made the boy release his hold in order to walk alongside her once again, an apologetic gaze shinning in his blue orbs as his hands hid inside his jean pockets. "So you're telling me that everyone around here will _always _act like a bunch of wild dogs?" At least she'd spoken, attempted to break the bubble of awkwardness that refused to pop above their heads after that small moment.

So she wasn't comfortable with human contact either; yet another thing both teens seemed to have in common. He wasn't going to say that, though. "Bulls... dogs... any other wild animals we all remind you of?" The quirk of his brow and tick of his tiers was purely amusement. Isaac was just used to the hustle and bustle of the student life in high school; never in his wildest dreams, and he'd had some wild ones, would he have thought that the speed in school would throw someone for such a loop, especially someone who seemed to just catch on so fast, like Brittany seemed to do. "Basically, yes." He admitted, looking over at her with a shake of his head, feet jogging on tiptoes up the flight of stairs, fingers trailing along the railing. "But you might not want to call them that to their faces," he advised, "Wouldn't want you to experience your first fight."

"Aw, why not?" She sardonically wondered, following along the stairs with that little sideways smirk across her lips. "I'm a tough girl, I can take care of myself." The smile that adorned her lips this time was a playful one; one that could be as much serious as it could be jovial, making the wolf wonder what her intentions at such a statement were.

He didn't mind it, though; instead he expressed his amusement with a shake of his head before finally allowing a motion of a fished out hand to introduce the long stretch from left to right. "This here would be your main hallway for the day." He announced, watching the smirk on her lips turn victorious before her eyes shifted from one side of the mostly empty hallway to the next; the grin dissipating from her brims as she took in the wide stretched hallway in its entirety.

"Well..." She expressed along with a slow nod of her head, remaining silent as her eyes scanned every single detail of the hallway that was as familiar to Isaac as his own home. "Great." She paused, bright blue orbs finally landing on his own. "Thanks." He was almost surprised to see a genuine grin crossing her lips.

He had to make himself nod in response, forcing upon a retaliating smile as a lift of his shoulders expressed his lack of a better response. "Mmhmmm..." His throat cleared, forcing the silence to fade away with a continuation of his short explanation over the hallway they stood upon. "It's real simple from here." He said, pulling his hands free from his pockets and working on unfolding the schedule the girl had pulled from one of her books; priorly folded to fit inside his pocket at the beginning of the tour.

Fitting hues skimmed over the schedule again, just to make sure he remembered correctly and didn't get anything mixed up and accidentally ended up misguiding the new girl in her first day in school. "So your classes here will go..." Pointing down the left hallway, he started instructing her. "The class at the farthest end of the hall, on the right, for third period." He nodded, lifting his eyes to make sure she was listening; not at all surprised when he realised her eyes were dancing along the directions he pointed towards as he continued. "Fourth is the closest classroom right behind you, and fifth is to the right, second class on the left." He motioned with his hand like what he imagined an air hostess did within a plane, almost feeling silly. "Simple." He cleared his throat again. "Right, left, left. Then you've got lunch." Chancing a glance toward the stairs again, Isaac idly wondered if it was rue of him to not take her to each class specifically; but almost as quick he decided that if it wounded up getting her lost, then he would simply force himself to take the time to show her once again the following day. Though, in his opinion, if she was smart enough to prattle in sass, she could follow along easily. He looked at her again. "Back down the stairs I can show you the gym, cafeteria and auditorium."

When his eyes met her frame once again she was in the middle of turning around in a little circle and looking around toward every single spot he had pointed out; it was almost amusing as her hand lifted with her index pointing upwards and around, and Isaac had to fight back a grin to show for it. Until finally a grin adorned her features as a nod bobbed her head affirmingly, making the ends of her curls bounce with the motion before her lips allowed words to escape them. "See?" Her hand lowered, that sardonic grin returning across her lips. "You can be rather nice when you're not stumbling against us short people and being distracted instead of apologetic."

The snark bled through her words, and Isaac wasn't able to keep back the amused grin that appeared in retaliation. "Careful," he sardonically warned. "There's still the last part of the tour left, I could run you over by mistake." Matching her tone, he crooked a sideways grin onto otherwise settled features; a clear difference from his lack of social skills earlier. Not to say that he wouldn't snap right back into his reserved state instantly if needed be. "Right." He grinned when the expression that crossed her features was as unamused and defeated as he'd hoped. "This way, then." Sweeping his arm out in a mocked motion of what he'd done earlier when he'd told her to carry on her way, Isaac laughed silently under his breath and started back down the stairs, making for the main lobby.

A short silence ensued as the girl made a rather big show of studying the hallway and the stairs as they stepped down; but the same sense of nervousness radiated from her, the same half steady half quick heartbeat that confused the werewolf. All feats that made the boy be wary and curious, wondrous over her actions; maybe she was paying so much attention to keep from something else, like a distraction, Isaac was rather much of an expert in distractions. He searched for them many times, and this girl... there was simply something _off_. Was that true instinct from the trust he had on his senses or just his worry over the pack displaying itself in the forced activity he found himself wrapped in with the new girl? How could he be sure at all? Well, he couldn't; so remaining wary and watchful was the best he could allow himself to do as they both stepped off of the last step; synchronized steps echoing against the walls as they meandered down the hall in a steady pace; not rushed and not snail slow, just a steady and easy going rhythm, settling. "Alright, confession time." She suddenly announced almost as if it were a reply to what he had said before so perfectly mocking the motion he'd done that very morning. "Feel free to laugh if you'd like..." She paused, rather dramatically in Isaac's opinion.

His curiosity peaked almost instantly; something that showed by the manner in which his eyes lifted to rest on her features while worrying shortly in wonder over if the girl would want a confession from him as well. "I watched shows about high schools to prepare myself for today..." She embarrassingly admitted, her eyes resting on his with a grimace twisting her features, surely awaiting for his allowed wave of laughter.

Whatever he'd assumed she was going to tell him certainly hadn't been at all what _had _come out of her lips. Was that what had her so nervous and her heart so jumpy? The fact that she watched TV shows to get a feel for high school? Maybe laughing was rude, but there was just no way Isaac could entirely suppress the chuckle that slid past parted brims. "Those shows are entirely wrong." He announced, head shaking. "I hope you haven't taken _all _of your advice from them."

Her lips twisted to the side again, pushing back a grin before a shrug lifted her shoulder mindlessly. "Well, not _all _my advice." Then that smile shifted on that half playful half sardonic grin she'd worn more times than once since the moment he met her. "I mean, the rest of my advice I got from you."

Isaac had to emit another half amused chuckle as his eyes fell to the ground for the shortest of moments, lifting once again to make sure they were going in the right direction even while his head shook in response to what she'd admitted to. "Can't say my advice is all that great either." He admitted, looking in her direction once again. "But I hope it helps at least a little." He stopped short, then, just outside of the gym before tapping on the heavy set of doors; the ones that always remained closed on the off chance a flying ball came towards it. "Period seven: phys ed." He announced, easily slipping back into guide mode with a short exhale of a sigh. "Lucky you;" he teased sardonically. "You get it right after lunch..." He paused to look down the hallway before allowing his gaze to land on Brittany once again. "...which is our next stop." He nodded. "Then your last period is back in with Mr. Over-zealous we had earlier, for Film and Fiction." He forced a friendly grin across his lips. "That's my class too."

He watched her study the door and the hallway surrounding her as intently as she had the hallway upstairs as he leaned his frame against the door for a short moment and snickering at the speed with which Brittany had seemed to catch on to what phys ed after lunch meant, for she'd finished her gazing about with a grimacing frown in the direction of the door. "Ugh." The worded complaint was followed by another painful smile in the boy's direction. "You know, P.E. after lunch sounds like I might get to see someone barf before the semester is over." She mused, making the boy she talked to smile in short amusement as he nodded. "I'm definitely _not _looking forward to that bloody mess." A little laugh escaped her lips as her head shook. "But I guess it's nice to know I'll be able to look forward to at least knowing _someone _in my last class."

Of course he had to nod. "Mm, yeah, I've no doubt that you'll see at least one person throw up by the end of the semester." He shrugged. "But hey, at least it's only a semester, yeah?" Slender fingers hooked behind his back and drummed a rhythm along the metal of the door before he pressed his palms flat to push away from the cool surface. "Come on." He motioned with his head to his left. "Last place to show you: lunch." The same forced grin lifted the corners of his lips for a moment. "Should we head that way now? Before the bell rings and this door flies open and knocks you down again?" Curling a small grin, Isaac watched as the girl's eyes rolled in feigned annoyance to be proven only by the grin across her lips.

"Hilarious." So he'd keep the events of her graceful fall by his fault in his mind; it made for good conversation apparently; at least his social skills weren't as bad as he thought. So, with a self-proud nod of his head he motioned for her to follow along, headed for the short trip down the main hallway of Beacon Hills high.

**To Be Continued.**


	10. Chapter 10: We've Got It All Wrong

By the time Isaac and Brittany had made their way down the main corridor and halted just outside of the always-noisy, and always-busy cafeteria, there were about five minutes until the dismissal bell rang shrilly through the air; a few people already walking along the halls in anticipation for lunch break. Topics of conversation between the two had wavered between the extracurricular activities that were available in school and around Beacon Hills, like the ballet studio she seemed very interested in when he mentioned it; his affinity for scarves, which the girl had pointed out when she noticed the one around his neck, and his asking her why she'd want to start school halfway through the year. "Uh... Coach wants the last word, always..." He was saying, focusing on advising the girl as much as he could before the bell rung and he had to wonder if he had to invite her to spend lunch with him to avoid awkwardness. "So, don't try your sass on him."

She nodded, hands gripping onto the strap of her bag a little tighter. "Noted." She said, and Isaac was thinking over what else to say – what other advice to offer the new girl – when a rather familiar scent reached him from behind; relaxing his senses quite automatically, and even bringing upon a grin across his features. "You did tell me about him before, when you—"

"Isaac?" The moment the new voice reached them, it broke off the little bubble of speech Brittany had been focused on; Isaac's slender arms had moved to slack in a cross against his chest as brims parted to release a small chuckle at the reminder of what he'd told the new girl about Coach in mock advice when he'd crashed against her, before a faint tap was dealt to his shoulder.

Allison.

Crooking a grin, Isaac stepped to the side so he could face the short haired brunette without turning his back towards Brittany. Seeing Allison present at school turned into a bigger relief that he'd thought it would be. A sense of familiarity came with seeing his huntress friend. "Hey," He said, watching a small smile adorn her features at his greeting. "Nice to see that you're here." Without really waiting for her to reply, Isaac's arms fell to his sides; one lifting to motion towards the long haired brunette whose blue eyes were dancing between the two friends. "Allison, this is Brittany. Brittany, my friend, Allison." It wasn't really Isaac's fault that he was a tad possessive and overly protective of his friends; they were all he had.

"Hey, nice to meet you." Allison greeted, grinning shortly. "You're new, right?" She asked, brown orbs searching her blues with forced curiosity for a few moments.

A polite grin had taken hold of Brittany's lips, and Isaac watched as her hand started lifting to extend in Allison's direction while she spoke. "Yeah, nice to meet you, Alli—" But the attention his friend had given the new girl hadn't lasted long; in fact, it had not even been there long enough for Brittany to properly reply before she'd sort of interrupted her to direct words toward him.

"Isaac, could I speak with you for a moment?" She wondered, turning urgently in his direction; words echoing as urgent as the gaze weighting on her features. "It's about Scott." She said, in hopes to make her friend aware of the importance of the information she clearly couldn't speak of in front of anyone else.

He watched Brittany's lips twist a little to the side and her eyes fall on him; but with a passing glance from her to Allison, Isaac bobbed his head in affirmation to his friend's request; letting the bag clutched in his arms to drop to his side, easing the weight of the strap around his shoulders. Not to be rude, but at that current point in time, anything Allison had to say about Scott was important. And it didn't exactly take a mind reader to understand that some students might need some time among friends; clearly the whole school had more important things to worry about than the new girl, with the whole death of a peer situation blooming over everyone's heads. So she clearly decided to take that cue. "Well, thank you for the tour, Isaac." She said, looking down at the hands that wrapped around the strap of her back before lifting them to look in his direction and Allison's. "I'll see you in class," he told him, "and very nice to meet you, Allison." With a nod of her head, Brittany didn't really wait any longer before taking a couple of steps back from both friends in case they thought of speaking.

"Catch ya around, Brittany!" He called, lifting two fingers in a wave, watching her frame turn around and walk away, toward the opposite side of the hallway. With her figure disappearing into the meld of the crowd that now filled the hallway, Isaac turned fully towards Allison with question and worry etched deeply across his features. He suddenly felt like he'd been living under a rock for the duration of a week and the world had imploded around him. With all hope, Isaac pleaded with himself that Allison would be able to fill him in and console the worry he had for all the pack. "You skipped out early this morning," he started with a smile, "didn't even get one of my awesome pieces of burnt toast." Grin crooked, Isaac let his eyes scan the hallway for eavesdroppers prior to nodding his head toward the cafeteria for Allison to lead the way to somewhere they could talk.

As she smiled, Allison's mind rewinded upon the previous night; a night she had spent with Scott in attempts to comfort him over his friend being in the hospital. "You heard me, huh?" She said, walking along with Isaac towards the inside of the cafeteria, attempting to fight the blush that threatened to colour her cheeks the moment Isaac nodded. "I would have stayed, but I didn't want to wake anyone up." She admitted. "Shame I missed out on the burnt toast, though." As per usual, she seemed to have words ready to roll off of her tongue without missing a single beat.

"Don't worry." Isaac teased. "Stick around and there will most _definitely _be more burnt toast, if you're lucky..." Ticking the corners of his mouth up into an entirely too innocent grin, he flapped an elbow out to gently nudge his friend's side. She surprised him with a smile even as a short air of debate planted itself across her features; and not even a couple of seconds later, Allison sauntered off, making a graceful and quick stride toward the furthest tables in the cafeteria. Without hesitation, Isaac followed after her with no other word; she was graceful and languid as she slipped right through the crowd to the table, and he was bumbling around and letting people pass. By the time he'd reached Allison, she was already sitting down; something which he promptly followed along to do on a chair at her side. "Why do so many people still go to this school?" Isaac wondered, setting his backpack down on the floor by his side prior to allowing his eyes to finally rest on his friend's features. "Doesn't it scream 'doom' yet?"

At least that made a short chuckle to escape from the girl's lips. "Well, it's not like they put a warning on the pamphlet when you enrol." She joked, placing her own bag on the table and moving her chair slightly closer to his so she didn't have to talk too loud over the slowly filling cafeteria's noise. "'Welcome to Beacon Hills high school, the school you should never want to stay alone at night in unless you have a death wish.'" She cited with a raise of her brows while she crossed her hands on top of the table the way Isaac had as his shoulders shook with silent chuckles over the pitched brochure line she had chanted. "Did you see Scott before you came to school?" She, then suddenly asked, changing the direction of the conversation completely.

Of course, it was suiting that Allison would be worried about Scott regardless of if they had gotten back together a week or two ago or not. He wasn't at school, they were close, Danny's death loomed over everyone's head like a horrible reminder that life wasn't eternal, and Stiles was in the hospital. Everyone in school was sad, but everyone in the _pack _was worried. "I saw him, yeah." He admitted, lifting a shoulder and giving a nod of his head. "He had to wait for Melissa to wake up, I was able to talk to him for a bit before coming to school." He informed her, allowing another grin to illuminate his features. "I think they both praised the heavens for you, though." He nudged her arm again. "Coffee; good move on your part."

"Thanks." She smiled; not even waiting longer than a beat before she spoke again. "Have you heard anything about how Stiles is?" It was clear simply by her scent that she was stalling whatever inquiry or topic she thought of bringing up before, and Isaac was curious, but he knew Allison; she'd speak whatever she needed to speak when she was ready. So, for the sake of his friend's sanity, Isaac took a breath and went along with her question.

"Not really, I—" He cleared his throat. "Scott hasn't contacted me since this morning, and the only thing Miss McCall told us was that Stiles wasn't in any danger, nor too broken." He told her, watching some of the concern wash away from Allison's features. "Scott's with him right now." Brushing the palm of his hand over the back of his neck, Isaac pressed his lips together with a faint shrug; just a simple rise and drop of his shoulders that was barely noticeable as he looked over at Allison.

"Oh, good." She said, the flicker of a smile curving her lips for a second. "Good." Her head bobbed in a nod, and then a silence followed; it was rather obvious that she had ran out of subjects to stall with, and Isaac was about to ask, but only seconds before he did her whole demeanour shifted as if with the flip of a switch, aware that she finally remembered she had broken him away from his new acquaintance with the promise of a talk; an important one. "I've got to ask you something," She finally said, eyes locked on his, "and it's probably going to make me sound insensitive, but... well, your answer could feed on a theory Scott and I have."

The boy frowned, setting his hands, crossed, against the table once again. "Okay." He refused to let his curious blues look away from his friend's questioning orbs. "Go ahead."

She nodded. "Alright..." But then her eyes narrowed, and not even a second later her head tilted shortly. "First of all, are you okay?" She wondered. "About... Danny, I mean."

Isaac almost instantly looked down, suddenly studying the table as if it had become many times more interesting than anything else. "Uh, yeah, I—" He frowned, grimacing for a second with a downward pull to his lips prior to shrugging a shoulder once again. "I guess." He finally looked up in Allison's direction; watching her carefulness, observant. "I mean, I guess it's like... you get used to playing with a guy on the team, know all of their quirks and moves and stuff, and now he's gone."

Suddenly her hand found his, making his posture straighten and a soft sigh to escape from parted brims as rather shocked orbs looked up in his friend's direction. "You know you can talk to me if you need anything, right?" She wondered, and even though Isaac could see the genuine reassurance in her eyes, he could still hear the little jump in her heart; nervousness.

"Yeah, I—thanks." He said, grinning a little more genuinely, completely aware that she didn't want to ask what she had planned. It only made Isaac the more curious. "So... what did you want to ask?" He prompted; not at all surprised when her hand moved away. He watched her frown, gulp and look away.

"Right, um..." Her throat cleared as her frown deepened slightly, eyes flicking from her suddenly laced hands to Isaac's eyes and back down again. "You knew Danny enough, right? I—" Allison's whole demeanour threatened to shift in a confident direction as she cleared her throat again, nodding and sitting a little straighter even as she leaned closer to her friend in order to speak her next words in a lower tone than her usual note. "Did you ever suspect he'd commit suicide?"

Isaac didn't even have to think twice about it; his head immediately shook. "No." It was something he'd heard some of Danny's closest friends discussing in the locker room earlier that day; they'd been angry, saying that the Sheriff hadn't searched for evidence well enough, that it was all completely impossible, that... "No way." Isaac repeated as he'd heard, because he agreed. "I mean, sure, he was quiet most times than not, but there's no way he—he'd do that. No way." His head continued shaking, and he suddenly felt bad; a feeling that evaporated almost as quickly as he'd smelt the change of mood in Allison: from guilty to worried and thoughtful in a matter of seconds. It's what made him remember her other words; as well as the ones he had exchanged with Scott that morning. "Why?" He asked. "What's the theory?"

"Well, Scott didn't think Danny would do something like that either." Allison confided, continuing the low tone of her words whilst moving her own chair a little closer to her curly haired friend. "Before we heard about Stiles, he and I spent most of the day yesterday going through the recent suicide victims, and..." Her head shook, lids blinking a couple of times as if that alone were to make her point clearer. "...well, only two of them suffered from depression. The rest, both adult and teenager alike, they were all happy. Hardworking, many friends, not bullied or anything that would want to make them want to end their lives; their suicides literally came out of nowhere."

At this, Isaac leaned closer; he listened, partly concerned, partly unhappy and partly confused. Almost somewhat guiltily hopeful, due to the fact that maybe Danny had been a victim instead of having been so out of hope to want to end his own life. "But..." He frowned. "Scott and I talked to Miss McCall. She told us the bodies had no sign of a struggle; nothing but the marks of what ended their life."

"Yeah, but there's something else." Allison's eyes fixated on Isaac's as she remained in her position. "Most of the bodies were found a day or two of their deaths, right?" Isaac nodded, encouraging her to go on. "Danny's wasn't." She informed him. "I went over to the hospital yesterday to talk to Melissa myself and she told me that it had only been a few hours since his death when Danny was brought in, and she found something weird she told me she was going to tell Scott about." And she was going to say more, but right as her lips were parting to speak, her phone vibrated on the table. Isaac didn't blame her for so urgently moving to check her notifications. "Oh, thank god." She sighed in relief, a smile that lit up her face for a few moments that adorned her features with a couple of tiny dimples on her cheeks. "Scott's on his way to school." She said. "He says Stiles is okay; just a couple of cuts and bruises, but he'll be discharged tomorrow morning."

"Oh, good." Isaac's head bobbed in a nod; suddenly feeling like all of his worries and concerns were dissipating one by one and bringing brand new ones to light.

Allison was nodding by the time he looked up. "Apparently Stiles is only staying overnight again for observation." She sighed once again. "To think I was so close to him and I didn't know he was even there." Allison's head shook. "I should tell Lydia." And then she was starting to stand up.

"Wait, Allison!" Isaac's whole body shifted in the chair before standing immediately as his hand quickly shoot up to take her arm in order to stop her in her tracks and step closer. "The thing." He said, making her head tilt to the side after looking at his hand on her arm. "You said there was something Miss McCall told you about that she was going to tell Scott." He reminded her. "What is it?" He sounded concerned; of course, he was relieved that his Alpha was finally coming to school, but the manner in which Allison had been talking to him made Isaac think that maybe what was happening around the town was something on their end of the rope, a.k.a. supernatural.

"Right, sorry." Thankfully, Allison nodded and sat down again, regardless of if her fingers moved on her phone in order to send her best friend a quick text; almost completely sure Scott would have already, before looking up at Isaac once again. "I guess I should apologise for his not telling you." She grimaced shortly. "I told Melissa I could stop by and let Scott know, and... well, I _did _stop by, but... you know."

Isaac simply nodded; regardless of his affection for his friends, he wasn't the most patient of people, and her noisy nightly activities with Scott were the least of his worries. "Yeah, I know." He simply urged. "What is it?" He asked again, leaning closer to her once again in outmost curiosity.

"It's, um..." She frowned, gulping once and blinking her lids repeatedly for a couple of beats before stopping her hues on his blues whilst returning to her initial almost-whispering tone. "She said she found a black gooey substance slowly drying from Danny's ear." Allison finally confided; not at all surprised to see Isaac slightly taken aback by the strange confession.

"Black gooey—" He echoed, blinking a couple of times before frowning as the facts slowly started clicking into place; and even if he'd tried to, he hadn't been able to stop himself from showing as much concern as hope. "Wait, so you're saying you think this is—" A few kids laughed obnoxiously loud behind Isaac, making his head shift in their direction as if he suddenly remembered where they were sitting; so he rolled his eyes, yet when he looked in Allison's direction again, his words left in a tone mirroring to her own whispered utterance. "You think this is our kind of thing?" Almost instantly Allison simply nodded, refusing to take her eyes away from her friend's. "What is it?" He wondered with the same curious tone.

"We don't know yet." She sorrowfully admitted, but as instantly as a small frown had appeared against her forehead it dissipated, changing for the smallest of smiles on her lips and a shrug of her shoulder. "But it's something, right?" She mused. "Maybe we can help stop all of this." It was almost as if she were voicing Isaac's thoughts' which only made him smile with a grin to mirror her own. She was right, and Isaac was going to express as such when her mood shifted in another strange direction; curiosity. And without even another word, the wolf knew that his friend had dropped the subject to possibly be talked over when the whole pack was present. "Hey, um..." She leaned closer, surprising Isaac with a smile so genuine that it dimpled her cheeks wholeheartedly. "...so you seemed to be pretty friendly with the new girl." She teased.

The subject had definitely been dropped. He had to sigh, canting his head shortly so she would see the light roll of his eyes. The leading joke through the pack was that _he _was the loner; which wasn't entirely false, but... well, he talked! To the pack, sure, but it counted. His lips pressed together, ignoring Allison's amused chuckle as he allowed a sigh to slip from his lips in a puff. "I... kind of plowed her over before first, ran into her in second, where she was ordered to sit with me, and then that skeeze of a literature teacher basically told me that since I was late I had to show her around during third." She informed his friend, happy to see her smiling even if it was at his expanse. So he allowed her to laugh a little as he was reminded of the manner in which he had neglected taking even the first note down. It caused his overly innocent smile. "Soooo..." He started, making her eyes already narrow with recognition. "...after you've endured the Romeo and Juliet lecture in Literature, think you could lend me your notes?"

He wasn't at all oblivious to the concern and sadness around the school, but at least, now, Isaac could attempt to find comfort on the fact that he could maybe fight off and destroy the reason behind his team mate's death.

-O-O-O-O-O-O-

_**~Many hours later, in Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital~**_

_Click, click, shuffle, shuffle. _Stiles Stilinski's eyes flew open the moment he heard those noises. At first he wondered where exactly he was, unable to remember anything whatsoever as his groggy state took over his tired mind completely. See, Stiles was _not _a light sleeper; it usually took the Sheriff knocking on his door and yelling to make the boy wake up; at least such was the reality before the whole black smoke ordeal.

_Oh, right. _He thought, remembering it all much faster than the last time he'd woken up alone. The hospital, the accident. He sighed. _Click, click, shuffle, shuffle. _There it was again, the noise that had so easily awaked him. He remembered his best friend, Scott, having been there with him, and as he looked around, Stiles realized he was curled up in a ball in the hospital sheets nearing a corner of the bed, almost about to fall off; the place where Scott had been was now empty, and, as the boy pressed a hand to the crumpled up sheets, he realized they were cold. Meaning his friend had left a while ago. _Click, click, shuffle, shuffle. _This time he blamed the noise on the bed as he shuffled on it until he could lay in the middle, carefully, with his unharmed hand as to not pull on the stitches, before allowing his eyes to scan the room.

Stiles Stilinski was many things, and one of them was not stupid. He'd blamed the noises on the bed, but they had been the same as before. Everything was calm, quiet, still. Except, of course, for the rain dripping against the window. _Click, click. _The window. Stiles nearly allowed a relieved sound to escape from his lips; the clicking sound was the window, it was open, and the wind outside pushed it back and forth in spacious rhythmic motions. _Click, click, shuffle, shuffle. _He groaned. _Okay, so if the clicking is the window, then what the hell is that other sound? _He thought, eyes shifting away from it in hopes to find another logical answer like the one the opening had provided.

The thing about that second sound was that it felt eerie, familiar, and strange all in one; and it made the hairs on Stiles' arms raise on end with worry and fear. What was it? His heart started beating a little faster, he could hear it beside his ears; that, and his breathing: it quickened because of it. _Click, click, shuffle, shuffle. _"Who's there?" He asked, feeling almost stupid for having spoken, but his eyes continued to wonder around the room in search of that other sound as, with his good hand, he pulled his frame into a sitting position, gulping down the fear that suddenly tensed his whole body. Fear; it had become Stiles' latest friend. Or, not friend, really, more like the annoying co-worker one meets with every single day but one can't ignore due to the fact that he's, well, one's co-worker. And he sneaked up all over the boy whenever _this _feeling was around: the awareness that something wasn't at all right. _Click, click, shuffle, shuffle. _

And then it hit him.

He'd heard that noise before; a while ago, weeks, probably, and he hadn't thought much about it because at the time he had thought it had been nothing but a nightmare, and then a hallucination. It had all been before _it _had chased Stiles into his near death on that accident in the Jeep. It was the smoke, letting the boy know that it was around the way it had once done before: by mimicking the sound of the dirt falling on top of his mother's coffin. "I know you're here." The boy said with a shaky tone. _Click, click, shuffle, shuffle. _He could feel his eyes stinging with the tears he refused to set free. "What do you want?" He asked with his forehead wrinkling with a concerned frown. "Why are you doing this?"

Silence.

Complete, and still silence. Not even the sound of the rain hitting against the window, regardless of if Stiles' eyes shifted to make sure it remained; not even the clicking of which source he had figured out moments prior, no white noise, not any other sort of sound that should be existent in a hospital. It was as if suddenly Stiles had been dropped into a sound-proof bubble; a sound-proof bubble where all he could hear were his shaky frightened breaths and the beat of his heart against his eardrums.

And then he saw it; sneaking down in smoky waves from the closest air vent: the smoke. That horrible, black, dreaded, annoying smoke. It was there for Stiles, and this time the boy was not going to be able to stop it; he wasn't going to be able to run, or even move. The only way out of there was through the window, or the door of the room he had been assigned; but then what? Run like he had done before? Run, and run, until… what? Until he dropped dead from exhaustion? He'd been supposed to be safe, he had been supposed to be resting in the safest place in town, yet… "WHAT DO YOU WANT!?" Stiles yelled in its direction, fear and anger streaking his words. Could anyone hear him? Was the unnatural silence something that affected everyone or just him?

Well, none of it had mattered. The smoke had moved; quick, quicker than ever before, and all the boy had been able to do was scream. And even then, such a sound didn't last long; his voice gurgled and cut with the sound of _it _forcing itself down Stiles' throat, and he felt it too. It was as if he had decided to take a dive inside a burning home and swallowed, breathed with his mouth until every single spot of smoke was down. The fire of nausea scorched his throat, his stomach, making him wish he could run; move and gag whatever it was that had gone down his throat; but once the smoke had completely gone, swallowed forcefully, and he willed his hands and feet to move, they didn't respond; not to him.

The force with which the smoke had attacked him had made Stiles' body slam against the bed, and moments later, his hands, controlled by some… _force_ that _definitely _was not the boy's brain, moved in front of his face in a stretched motion, as if he were trying to make sure they properly worked. Stiles could think, he could perfectly well scream, but this time, nothing left his lips. _What the hell is going on? _He thought, breath shaking only inside his mind. _What's happening to me? _

That's when a horrible, throaty, devilish low laugh started escaping through his parted lips. "You're mine now, _Stilinski._" Stiles' voice said, but he hadn't wanted those words to leave his lips. The way his last name had been spoken echoing as if whatever had made his lips move had been testing the name for the first time.

_What's going on? _Stiles repeated, but, again, nothing left his lips. He was just an echo inside his own mind.

That laugh again; it made him sick. "No one can run from me, boy." It spoke through him. "_No one._" His voice sounded different too; deeper, rougher. "But you know what?" Stiles' own voice asked him, making the boy's fear overpower his bravery. "I'm going to make you pay for trying."

Stiles wanted to scream, but all that happened was that he was tearing at the walls of his own mind; like a prison. And the _thing_? The smoke that had taken over him? It just laughed that same throaty laugh. It echoed Victorious, it made the boy's whole body feel as if it were on fire, as if every inch of him scorched with flames he couldn't even move to put out.

In the distance, somewhere near the centre of Beacon Hills, a car with paint as shiny as if it were new was parked by the side of a road; wipers dancing from side to side like a quick-tempo'd metronome to rid the windshield from the rain. The hum of the engine nearly muted as the tempest echoed so loud that it almost became white noise against the pavement, even quieting the murmur of music that tooted at full volume from inside the car.

Music that made the echo of the wail a banshee by the name of Lydia Martin emitted, seem like nothing but a whisper in the middle of the night.

**To Be Continued.**


	11. Chapter 11: Little Headache

_How was he tired? He had slept for hours, and yet he still had the same dreading feeling reigning over him and his every sense. Lydia was beside him, her breathing calm, slow; his hand caressed the back of Lydia's upon his chest. The sun shone brightly upon the day, the first truly sunny day in longer than he wanted to remember; and he could recall his strawberry blonde girlfriend falling asleep in his arms, thus resting so comfortably against him. _

_He was tired, though. As if he had ran for hours on end, or as if he'd been attempting to move a giant piano made of stone all on his own. Simply exhausted; but he didn't want to sleep. No_, _he _did _want to sleep, but... he couldn't. Why couldn't he sleep? And why was he suddenly feeling a fiery urge raising inside him, like the heat of a bath full of water warming up his senses as every limb submerged inside it; only much warmer, stinging, scorching, urging him to push Lydia aside, wake her up and tell her to run. _

Wait, run?

_Why would Stiles want Lydia to run away from him? Why would she_ run_ away from him? He wasn't sure, but he felt a dire need to tell her while he still could. Yet his lips didn't open, they remained shut, only parting to let out a broken breath; it sounded bored, even amused. _Run! _He wanted to say, but why? "Lydia?" There, he'd said her name; yet it didn't sound urgent, it sounded tantalising, mocking. As if he were talking to a child or a stupid person. _

"_Stiles, don't." She said, her grip tightening on him. It made him laugh, only it was more of a chuckle, an amused one as if Lydia were a child saying something silly. "Fight it." She whispered; her head still resting on his shoulder, her hand's grip tightening on his clothes. _Fight it? _He thought, wondering upon the content of her words. _Fight what?

_But then he was moving, doing what he'd wanted before, to push Lydia away, but he wasn't telling her to run. He didn't even know he could move that fast. One second he was laying down, and the next he was straddling Lydia's struggling form. His hands wrapped around her throat and his lips curved into a twisted version of a smile. "Fight it!" She attempted to say from under his grasp. And he finally understood why she'd told him that. Why was he doing that? Why was he strangling the life out of one of the people who kept him sane day by day? "Stiles, you can fight it!" Her words came choked and short as she struggled under him. _

_But he couldn't; he couldn't fight what was happening, all he could do was scream and hear nothing come out of his lips, and even worse, see the life drain out of Lydia Martin while his lips emitted a horrific wave of laugher, regardless of if he was screaming inside or not... _and then the scream became more real; still internal, but more real, and Stiles' eyes flew open.

The first thing they saw were the white squares of the hospital ceiling, the bright white lights mixed with the early day sun stopping any shadow from appearing through any corner; if anyone had seen Stiles they would have thought he was resting peacefully, not bothered by any darkness; but what they didn't know was that the darkness rested inside him, trapping him. Just like in the dream. _Oh, god, was that a dream? _He wondered, feeling the edge of fear burn within him. It had to be a dream, it _had _to be.

And then Stiles was chuckling; the same twisted sound he had heard in the dream, the amused one, the mocking one. It was _it; it _was making him chuckle. It _had _all been a dream, but the horrible chuckle coming unwanted from his throat confirmed something for the boy: it wouldn't be just a dream for long.

Every single thing that had echoed inside him mind faded like smoke the moment there was a knock on the door; it had been as if, with the flick of a switch, everything that had happened the night before, or the dream he'd woken up from so suddenly had dissipated from his mind, as if it had never happened. "What's so funny?" Melissa McCall wondered with a smile as she slowly entered the room.

"I don't know." Stiles admitted, and he didn't; he remembered nothing, because _it _willed it so. "I just woke up laughing." He pushed himself up from the bed with his good arm, using the other one's hand to gently rub against his face.

The nurse shut the door behind her as the smile widened shortly. "Must have been a good dream, then." She mused, making the boy nod and gift her with a tired little smile. "Scott will be here soon." She announced, and that's when Stiles realised she had been carrying his clothes to shortly after be offer them to him, and then she slipped into a whole technical walk through about his checking out of the hospital; not that he was in any way new to it, but he nodded regardless and appreciated her help while he stared at the clothes he had to change into so he didn't leave and walk around in sweats and a hospital gown.

He wanted to remind himself to let Scott know that they needed to stop by his house before getting ice creams, for he _needed _an outfit change and a shower. _Needed. _Not taking a shower and walking around in partly bloody clothes wouldn't be something to not frown upon anywhere the two friends went to.

Melissa left.

As he slipped into bathroom, in which Stiles refused to take a shower due to the fact that he wanted to get away from the hospital as quickly as possible, he remembered the manner in which he had ran from the wreck that had been his car, and, in turn, the lack of air entering his lungs when he finally arrived to the hospital and Melissa greeted him. But the mystery remained, for there was one thing that didn't click in the memory: he couldn't remember why he had been running, or why the car crash had happened in the first place. It was like a blurry little detail that, no matter how much he tried to remember, he couldn't; in fact, whenever he _did _try to remember all he would get was a stinging headache and a strange horrible sore-throat-like tingle in the middle of his throat.

His reflection looked tired, extremely; Stiles was pale as it was, but now he looked almost see through. He could only hope the shower and some _real _food would give some colour back to his face. He coughed, wondering upon the source of the sensation of his throat. It was as if he had accidentally swallowed a large piece of candy and the phantom of the discomfort had remained; but he couldn't remember swallowing any pills, and even if he did, he knew how to do it so he wouldn't even feel them going down. So _what _was it? He winced; there was that piercing headache again. To say that he was finding all his discomforts annoying would be an understatement.

"Stiles?" His head was slipping through the hole of his shirt when he heard Scott's voice; a feat that made his eyes shift toward the door that would lead to his hospital room as he lowered the material of his bloody shirt over his torso.

Seconds later, Stiles stepped out of the little washroom in attempts to escape his pale reflection; the smile that lifted his lips was a tired one, but genuine nonetheless. "Hey, Scott." He greeted before clearing his throat; another attempt to get the strange annoying feeling away from his throat.

"Dude, I'm sorry I'm late." He said, the door to the room open behind him. "I slept through my alarm, and my mom didn't wake me." He said whilst watching his friend move around the hospital room.

"It's okay." Stiles told him as his hands shifted to fix his dishevelled clothes. "I woke up not too long ago myself." He admitted, keeping that tired grin across his lips for a short moment. "Do you mind if we stop by my house? I need clean clothes." For a flicker his eyes lowered, then rose to look in his friend's direction once again while the pads of his thumb and index pinched the fabric of his bloody and dirty shirt as if to display what he meant.

"Of course, man. No problem." Scott replied, nodding with a smile across his features before motioning shortly to the open door behind him. "I hope you're okay with having junk food for breakfast, 'cause that's what we're getting before the ice cream."

When Stiles approached him, Scott wasted no time on resting his hand on his unharmed arm, making a grin cross the boy's lips before a shake of his head forced an encouraging grin upon them. "Dude, quit it." He said, patting his friend's shoulder with his bandaged arm so he would release the other. "I'm fine, okay?" He reassured his friend. "Come on. I haven't eaten any good food in two days, do you actually think I would not be up to eating junk food? _Me_?" A sardonic scoffed breath puffed through his lips. "I'd have to be in a _coma_ for that to happen."

The motion worked, because Scott laughed; but, unable to help himself due to the relief running through his veins, the wolf moved quickly to wrap his arms around his friend, who chuckled painfully against his grip yet quickly after returned the gesture with a careful motion of his arms. "You worried us all, Stiles." Scott admitted, feeling the boy nod shortly, that same short breathed painful chuckle escaping through his lips as his good hand patted Scott's back. And it was then, when Scott's own hand patted against Stiles' shoulder, that a rather rotten smell reached the wolf's nostrils; reason enough to break the hug and hold his friend's biceps as a grimace and a frown invaded Scott's features. "What's that smell?" He asked; there was the usual anxious yet familiar odour radiating from his best friend, but there was also an uncomfortably rotten and putrid smell to accompany it; something Scott simply couldn't put his finger on.

This time, the chuckle wouldn't have been able to be stopped even if Stiles had tried, and it was followed by two coughs in reaction to the feeling in the middle of his throat. "Yeah, yeah, I know." He rolled his eyes in feigned annoyance. "I smell worse than you after lacrosse practice." He said, head shaking and finally walking away from the horrid hospital room with that pounding headache making his discomfort more evident.

-O-O-O-O-O-O-

It hadn't taken long, after Stiles had left the shower and his eerily tired reflection behind, he moved quickly to get dressed; he wasn't trying too hard, so he'd gone with khaki pants, a white plain shirt and a red hoodie. Sneaker clad feet stepped from one side of his room to the other in quick motions where he left order behind instead of mess; dirty laundry in the wash basket, all the things he'd used in the past fifteen minutes left where he'd first found them. He didn't even understand _why _he had bothered to do as such, but he had. The shower had relaxed him such that the headache had become almost ignorable, and he became almost sure of the thought that it might completely disappear the moment something sugary entered his system.

For a second, Stiles stood at his doorway, looking into his room as if he were making sure he hadn't forgotten something, which, by patting his pockets, he realised he hadn't; his phone was back in his pocket, his keys were downstairs, and his mind was still in the worried mindset it had been in moments after that pleasant memory he had recalled during his shower; the memory of that one emotional freak out courtesy of Lydia Martin, asking him questions over how nice he was to her, why he did the things he did, and so on; something that had only resulted on the boy blurting out most of his feelings toward her and had ended on their first _real _kiss a week after deciding to be together. A wonderful memory that had popped into his mind out of nowhere like a replay that had only worsened his headache, but pleasant for the memory alone, nonetheless.

His whole frame turned away from his room before his steps led him away into the little hallway that would take him down the stairs which, regardless of his tired demeanour, Stiles skip-stepped until he'd reached the lower level of the house; walking toward the living room where he'd left his best friend. "Remind me to be more careful from now on?" He requested of Scott the moment he saw his friend sitting on his living room couch; a small sardonic smile lifting the corners of Stiles' lips as he stood right under the doorway of the room. "Showering and getting dressed with one hand is absolute _hell_."

Scott laughed, his frame lifting from the couch and his hands moving swiftly to shut down the television he had been partly ignoring due to the manner in which he had been texting Allison. And after a couple of moments in which Scott attempted to leave everything in the living room the way he had found it, both friends were off and away from Stiles' house in the search of junk sweets.

-O-O-O-O-O-O-

It had all been good fun, letting Stiles go about his day, feeding off of his memories the way only _it _could, pushing his mind in ways that would satiate it's every need. Perhaps it's job should have been done the night before, when it had been able to control Stiles' every limb and thought, pushing forth images of what it's petty plans were, to just have the kid shoot himself with his father's gun, or hang himself, maybe even run to the roof of the hospital and fling himself from there into an impending bloody doom brought forth by its skills at taking any innocent soul into their own deathbed.

But no, not Stiles. Why? Well, he had been able to outrun it more than once; his room, his school, a mall, an empty road. It had been insulting; a kid, _just _a kid had escaped it with thoughts of fear and the wonder of his own sanity making its goal shift into personal waters rather rapidly. So personal, in fact, that the first thing it had done the moment it had taken over Stiles' young body had been to let him know just how it planned to make him suffer; how it would kill his friends, his girlfriend, and he'd feel every single drop of blood fall on his fingertips.

Not that he could remember any of that now, of course, sitting there in a small booth in the local dinner as him and Scott chatted away about each other's lives. Thoughts, forth and back, conscious and subconscious; it fed of them all. The memory of the first kiss Stiles had had with that popular crush of his, _since the third grade _echoing over every corner of his mind whenever a though of the young strawberry blonde crossed his mind; a panic attack cut short by the shock of her lips on his, followed by the vivid memory of the day he had asked her out, and that desperate kiss that Stiles had attempted to calm her doubts and fears with during that second week that made Lydia Martin number three on its list. Number three, because Stiles' first and second most important relationships were the ones he had with his father and the very best friend he enjoyed a bowl of ice cream with at that moment: Scott. The vivid memories of their preschool days in the sandbox were easy to retrieve from Stiles' mind, followed by the many times in which they had gotten in some sort of trouble together; the day in the forest when everything changed, and every single adventure or misfortune they had suffered together thereafter.

And Stiles' father, the Sheriff; well, his father was a whole other case entirely. The memory of the horrible family death was ever-present in Stiles' mind, whether he was aware of it or not, but it haunted him. Evermore when his father drank, or stared at him too long. The kid's mind was a highway of thoughts roaming faster than that of many people _it_ had taken over and killed; which satiated its needs faster than most. It's why it hadn't taken long before it had grown bored and tired of allowing the next to inexistent humanity inside it to allow the boy a couple of more minutes of peace from it before it even started with its plans.

Stiles and Scott were halfway through their burger by the time it had grown impatient; humanity had sixty percent of the blame, the rest was the eminent need to have everyone around the boy fooled into believing everything was normal. But _fuck _could Stiles speak; he wouldn't shut up! Even with French fries in his mouth or a spoonful of ice cream, he wouldn't stop speaking. It was exactly what had broken the levee for it.

In fact, it had grown so impatient that it couldn't even wait until the planned time to take over Stiles' mind again. It had planned on waiting until Scott drove him back home, maybe even have the Sheriff see him once before vanishing through thin air, but the impatience grew so much that it took the first opportunity it saw: when Scott stood up to pay the bill, followed by a quick stop to the washroom. It forced its power to reign over Stiles once again. It could see the reflection of the dark, endless beauty that its eyes were on the napkin supplier the moment it had stepped up; the spoonful of ice cream stopping on its journey to the intruder's borrowed mouth. "Ugh." It said, lowering the spoon right away, and blinking it's eyes in order to use the mask of the boy's amber orbs that shone humanly safe as it searched around for anyone that could be looking in Stiles' direction.

It only took a moment to make sure he wasn't being watched, and one more moment to disappear from the tiny diner with a chuckle and a smirk of Stiles' lips. Because finally, the intruder would get to have a little fun with its own borrowed hands.

**To Be Continued.**


End file.
